🪴 Crowded seeds and growth: the whole packet

🪴 Crowded seeds and growth · 4th–8th grade · 14 days of testing · about $2 · 20 minutes a sitting

My days, if the fair is 18 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 how many beans share one cup, then how tall the tallest plant in the cup is on day 14 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

• 🫘 Dried beans from the grocery bag (pinto, lima or kidney): 30, all the same kind
• 🥤 Paper cups with a hole poked in the bottom: 9, all the same size
• 🪴 Potting soil
• 🍽️ A baking tray or big plate: 1, to stand the cups on
• 🚰 Water from the tap
• 🥛 A measuring cup
• 🩹 Masking tape, to mark lines
• 🖍️ Crayons or markers
• 📏 A ruler

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

1. Soak 30 beans in a cup of water overnight.
2. Fill nine cups with the same amount of potting soil, to 2 cm below the rim, and stand them on a tray.
3. Label three cups 1 bean, three cups 3 beans and three cups 6 beans.
4. Push the right number of beans a finger deep into each cup, spread as far apart as you can.
5. Water each cup with a quarter cup of tap water, and set them all on the same bright windowsill.
6. Every other day, give each cup the same quarter cup of water, however many beans it holds.
7. On day 14, measure the tallest plant in each cup, from the soil to its highest leaf tip.
8. Write each height in your table, in centimetres.
9. Look at the stems and leaves, and write down which cups have thin, pale or small plants.
10. Find the mean height for each number of beans and draw a bar graph.
11. Wash your hands after touching the soil.

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

I changed: Beans in a cup   I measured: how tall the tallest plant in the cup is on day 14 (cm)

MY GRAPH (a bar graph: beans in a cup 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: use a bigger cup for each number of beans, and graph the height against the amount of soil for each plant.

1. What made you want to ask this question? Say something like: I wanted to know: do crowded seeds grow shorter?
2. What did you think would happen, and why? Say something like: I thought changing how many beans share one cup would change how tall the tallest plant in the cup is on day 14, and I wrote down why.
3. What did you change, and what did you measure? Say something like: I changed how many beans share one cup (1 bean, 3 beans, 6 beans) and measured how tall the tallest plant in the cup is on day 14 in cm.
4. What did you keep the same, and why does that matter? Say something like: I kept the same size of cup, with the same amount of soil and the same kind of bean, soaked overnight the same, so only how many beans share one cup 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: 1 bean and 6 beans 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: use a bigger cup for each number of beans, and graph the height against the amount of soil for each plant.