🌱 Seed depth and sprouting: the whole packet

🌱 Seed depth and sprouting · 3rd–8th grade · 14 days of testing · about $1 · 15 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 deep the bean is planted, then how many days until the shoot pokes out of the soil 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): 9, all the same kind
• 🥤 Paper cups with a hole poked in the bottom: 9, the deeper the better
• 🪴 Potting soil
• 🚰 Water from the tap
• 🥄 Measuring spoons
• ✏️ A pencil
• 🩹 Masking tape, to mark lines
• 📏 A ruler

Be safe: 👶 Small parts · 🧼 Wash your hands after

1. Soak nine beans in a cup of water overnight.
2. Fill nine cups with soil to 2 cm below the rim, and label them 1, 3 and 6 cm, three of each.
3. Mark 1, 3 and 6 cm up a pencil with masking tape, so you can measure each hole.
4. Poke a hole to the right depth in each cup, drop in a bean, and cover it with soil.
5. Give every cup a tablespoon of water, and set them all in a warm, bright spot.
6. Every day, give each cup the same tablespoon of water.
7. Check every day, and write down the day each shoot pokes through the soil.
8. If a bean hasn't come up by day 14, write 'not up' beside it.
9. Find the mean days for each depth and draw a line graph.
10. Wash your hands after touching the soil.

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

I changed: Planting depth   I measured: how many days until the shoot pokes out of the soil (days)

MY GRAPH (a line graph: planting depth along the bottom, days 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: plant at each depth in sand and in potting soil, and draw a line for each.

1. What made you want to ask this question? Say something like: I wanted to know: does planting a seed deeper make it slower to come up?
2. What did you think would happen, and why? Say something like: I thought changing how deep the bean is planted would change how many days until the shoot pokes out of the soil, and I wrote down why.
3. What did you change, and what did you measure? Say something like: I changed how deep the bean is planted (1 cm deep, 3 cm deep, 6 cm deep) and measured how many days until the shoot pokes out of the soil in days.
4. What did you keep the same, and why does that matter? Say something like: I kept the same kind of bean, soaked the same night and the same cups and soil the same, so only how deep the bean is planted 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 cm deep and 6 cm deep 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: plant at each depth in sand and in potting soil, and draw a line for each.