🍌 Banana ripening in a paper bag: the whole packet

🍌 Banana ripening in a paper bag · 2nd–6th grade · 4 days of testing · about $3 · 15 minutes a sitting

My days, if the fair is 14 days away

Count back from your fair day and write in each date. Fewer days than this? The jobs share days, in this order; nothing is skipped.

Dates from my teacher

• My question is due
• Testing starts
• My results table and graph are due
• My board is due

In this packet

1. 🗓️ My project plan
2. 💭 My hypothesis
3. 🧺 Change, measure, keep the same
4. 🪜 My steps
5. 📊 My results
6. 📓 My logbook
7. ✅ My conclusion
8. ✂️ Board titles to cut out
9. 🏅 The judge's questions and my certificate

If I change where the banana is kept, then how many brown spots the banana has on day four will ________________, because _____________________________________________

What I think will happen, in my own words:

3 levels × 3 tries at each = 9 tries in all. If anything you keep the same changes, you won't know which change made the difference.

What I need

• 🍌 Bananas from the same bunch, still a little green: 9, all bought on the same day
• 🛍️ A paper lunch bag: 6
• 🍎 An apple: 3
• 🍽️ Small plates or saucers, all the same: 3
• 🩹 Masking tape, to mark lines
• 🖍️ Crayons or markers

Be safe: 🚫 Test food is not for eating · 🧼 Wash your hands after

1. Choose nine bananas that are all a little green.
2. Put three bananas on the counter, each on a plate, away from the sun.
3. Put three more bananas in three paper bags, one in each, and fold the tops over.
4. Put the last three bananas in bags with an apple in each, and fold the tops over.
5. Label every banana's plate or bag with masking tape, so you know which is which.
6. Every day, take each banana out and count its brown spots bigger than a pencil dot.
7. Write each count in your notebook, and put the banana back where it was.
8. On day four, copy each banana's spot count into your table.
9. Wash your hands, and do not eat the test bananas.
10. Find the mean for each place, and draw a bar graph.

Write each number in your results table the moment you measure it.

I changed: Where it is kept   I measured: how many brown spots the banana has on day four (brown spots)

MY GRAPH (a bar graph: where it is kept along the bottom, brown spots up the side)

What I noticed: ______________________________________________

Write something every day you work on it, even the days you only gather things. More days? The three-page logbook prints from peabody.kids/science-fair/templates/logbook.

My hypothesis was ☐ right ☐ partly right ☐ not right.

I know because my numbers show:

What surprised me, or what might have gone wrong (7th and up):

Next time I would test:

Idea: Change a second thing: put one, two and three apples in the bag, and graph the spots on day four against the number of apples.

1. What made you want to ask this question? Say something like: I wanted to know: does a paper bag make a banana ripen faster?
2. What did you think would happen, and why? Say something like: I thought changing where the banana is kept would change how many brown spots the banana has on day four, and I wrote down why.
3. What did you change, and what did you measure? Say something like: I changed where the banana is kept (On the counter, In a paper bag, In a paper bag with an apple) and measured how many brown spots the banana has on day four in brown spots.
4. What did you keep the same, and why does that matter? Say something like: I kept bananas from the same bunch, all a little green and the same room, away from the sun the same, so only where the banana is kept was different.
5. How many times did you test it? Say something like: 3 times at each of my 3 levels, and I found the middle number.
6. What did you find out? Show me in your numbers. Say something like: Look at my table: On the counter and In a paper bag with an apple gave different numbers, and here's the pattern.
7. Was your hypothesis right? How do you know? Say something like: My numbers show whether I was right, partly right or not, and I can show you where.
8. Did anything go wrong, or surprise you? Say something like: One try was odd, so I did it again and wrote it in my logbook.
9. If you did it again, what would you change or test next? Say something like: I'd change a second thing: put one, two and three apples in the bag, and graph the spots on day four against the number of apples.