🧅 Regrowing green onions: the whole packet

🧅 Regrowing green onions · 1st–5th grade · 7 days of testing · about $2 · 10 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 what the green onion is left in, then how tall the green onion is on day seven 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

• 🧅 Green onions with their roots still on: 9, from one bunch
• 🥛 Clear plastic cups, all the same size: 2, the same size
• 🍽️ Small plates or saucers, all the same: 1
• 🪴 Potting soil
• 🚰 Water from the tap
• 🔪 A sharp kitchen knife, for the grown-up
• 📏 A ruler

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

1. Grown-up: A grown-up cuts nine green onions so each piece is 5 cm long from the root end.
2. Stand three pieces, roots down, in a clear cup of water that just covers the roots.
3. Plant three pieces, roots down, in a clear cup of potting soil, and give it a splash of water.
4. Lay the last three pieces on a plate, with no water and no soil.
5. Put the cups and the plate side by side on the same bright windowsill.
6. Every day, top up the water cup and give the soil cup the same splash of water.
7. On day seven, measure from the water, soil or plate up to each piece's tallest green tip.
8. Write each height in your table, in centimetres.
9. Draw a bar graph of the height for each way of growing.
10. Wash your hands after touching the soil, and never eat the test onions.

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

I changed: Left in   I measured: how tall the green onion is on day seven (cm)

MY GRAPH (a bar graph: left in along the bottom, cm 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: stand the pieces in water beside a bright window, on a dim shelf and in a dark cupboard, and graph their heights each day.

1. What made you want to ask this question? Say something like: I wanted to know: do green onions regrow best in water or soil?
2. What did you think would happen, and why? Say something like: I thought changing what the green onion is left in would change how tall the green onion is on day seven, and I wrote down why.
3. What did you change, and what did you measure? Say something like: I changed what the green onion is left in (A cup of water, A cup of soil, A dry plate) and measured how tall the green onion is on day seven in cm.
4. What did you keep the same, and why does that matter? Say something like: I kept pieces cut to the same length from one bunch and the same bright windowsill the same, so only what the green onion is left in 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: A cup of water and A dry plate 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: stand the pieces in water beside a bright window, on a dim shelf and in a dark cupboard, and graph their heights each day.