🫘 Seed size and sprouting: the whole packet

🫘 Seed size and sprouting · 3rd–7th grade · 7 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 how big the seed is, then how many of the five seeds have sprouted by 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

• 🫘 Dried beans in three sizes: lima, pinto and lentils: 15 of each kind
• 🛍️ Plastic bags: 9 zip bags
• 🧻 Paper towels
• 🚰 Water from the tap
• 🩹 Masking tape, to mark lines
• 🖍️ Crayons or markers

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

1. Fold a damp paper towel into each of nine zip bags.
2. Label three bags lentil, three pinto and three lima.
3. Put five seeds of the right kind on the towel in each bag.
4. Zip each bag almost shut, and tape all nine to a wall in one warm room, out of direct sun.
5. Every day, add a few drops of water to any dry towel, and tell a grown-up if a bag smells bad.
6. Every day, count the seeds in each bag with a little white root poking out.
7. On day four, write each bag's count in your table.
8. Keep counting until day seven, and note which kind sprouted all five first.
9. Find the mean count for each seed and draw a bar graph.
10. Wash your hands after touching the seeds, and never eat them.

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

I changed: Kind of seed   I measured: how many of the five seeds have sprouted by day four (seeds sprouted, of 5)

MY GRAPH (a bar graph: kind of seed along the bottom, seeds sprouted, of 5 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: soak each kind overnight first, and graph how the soaked seeds compare with the dry ones.

1. What made you want to ask this question? Say something like: I wanted to know: do bigger seeds sprout faster?
2. What did you think would happen, and why? Say something like: I thought changing how big the seed is would change how many of the five seeds have sprouted by day four, and I wrote down why.
3. What did you change, and what did you measure? Say something like: I changed how big the seed is (Lentil (small), Pinto bean (medium), Lima bean (big)) and measured how many of the five seeds have sprouted by day four in seeds sprouted, of 5.
4. What did you keep the same, and why does that matter? Say something like: I kept five seeds in every bag and the same damp towel in every bag the same, so only how big the seed is 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: Lentil (small) and Lima bean (big) 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: soak each kind overnight first, and graph how the soaked seeds compare with the dry ones.