1. © File copyright Colin Purrington. You may use for making your poster, of course, but please do not plagiarize, adapt, or put on your own site. Also, do not upload this file, even if modified, to third-party file-sharing sites such as doctoc.com. If you have insatiable need to post a template onto your own site, search the internet for a different template to steal. File downloaded from http://colinpurrington.com/tips/academic/pos terdesign. Each Research Question(s) Is there a difference between growth rates of plants in aquaponics vs. hydroponics? Hypothesis There is a difference in the growth rate of aquaponics vs. hydroponics. Null hypothesis There is no difference in the growth rate of aquaponics vs. hydroponics. Technology, Materials, and Methods To test the hypothesis I used a mason jar hydroponics/aquaponics system. There were a total of 12 jars, 6 for aquaponics and 6 for hydroponics. Each jar was filled with 2 quarts of water. Each jar was equipped with a fish tank bubbler. The aquaponics jars were treated with Aqueon water conditioner for fish tanks to eliminate chloramines. One veil tail betta fish was added to each aquaponics jar. Nothing additional was added to the aquaponics jars. The water in the hydroponics jars was treated with expert gardener plant food by Miracle-Gro according to the directions on the box. The control group consisted of 4 plants and was planted in Miracle-Gro potting soil. Each plant occupied its own pot. The plant chosen for the experiment was Catharanthus roseus an annual species of flower that grows primarily in dry areas. Each plant was weighed after 1 week of growth in the medium and again after 27 days in the growth medium. The results were graphed and a t-test was administered to compare the means of growth in grams. Acknowledgments I would like to acknowledge the help of my family. Their help in designing the experiment and executing it was essential. I would also like to acknowledge the help of Riverbend Nursery & Landscaping for providing the plants and substrate at no cost. Findings According the t-test we can reject the null hypothesis. This means that the growth rate of aquaponics is different than hydroponics. The initial cost of hydroponics is also less than that of aquaponics. Aquaponics systems were designed to use edible fish. The aquaponics in a mason jar set up cannot be used this way. Betta fish are the best fish for this type of system. Rejecting the null hypothesis has many implications depending on the use of the experiment. Because the growth rate of hydroponics is statistically different than that of aquaponics we can be confident in choosing one system over the other in the future. In a classroom the experiment is a good way to teach students many different standards. However because of the expensive nature of the experiment eliminating the more expensive aquaponics would be beneficial. Unfortunately this also eliminates the benefit of using fish in the experiment. In the mason jar version of this experiment betta fish are used because of their adaptions to small amounts of water. Using betta fish would help students understand adaptations and several other important concepts in science standards. In the future The experiment could be improved by using more precise measurement tools, better natural lighting, and different plants. Starting the plants from seed would also provide a more reliable measurement of plant growth with more weighing events. Conclusions and Implications For the application or reproduction of this experiment care must be taken in how it’s carried out. What kinds of concepts you decide to teach students should influence how the experiment is conducted. By: Joshua Larson Date: 10/29/2015 Scientific Research Poster Presentation Data analysis The data was assessed using a t-test in Excel. According the t-test there was a p- value of 0.017. We can reject the null hypothesis. We can be reasonably confident that there is a difference in growth rate between the aquaponics plants and hydroponic plants. Pictures Fishing for Answers Introduction Hydroponics is the practice of growing plants in water rather than soil. Soil as a growth medium is where plants obtain their nutrients. In a hydroponics system nutrients are added to the water from artificial fertilizers. Aquaponics like hydroponics is the practice of using water as the growth medium for plants. However in aquaponics no additional nutrients are added to the water. All of the nutrients are obtained from fish sharing the water with a selected plant. Standards/cross cutting concepts MS-LS2-3: Students should build models to show the interactions of living and nonliving parts of an ecosystem. The experiment demonstrates this interaction for students to model. MS-LS2-5: In this standard students evaluate ecosystem services to determine real world worth. The experiment allows students to evaluate 2 different approaches to ecosystem services and use statistics to make an argument based on evidence. Stability and change: students will view how nutrient flux or light effects the ecosystem experiment.