🫘 Soaked beans and sprouting: the whole packet

🫘 Soaked beans and sprouting · 2nd–6th grade · 7 days of testing · free · 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 long the beans are soaked first, then how many of the five beans 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 from the grocery bag (pinto, lima or kidney): 45, all the same kind
• 🥛 Clear plastic cups, all the same size: 2, for soaking
• 🛍️ Plastic bags: 9 zip bags
• 🧻 Paper towels
• 🚰 Water from the tap
• ⏱️ A stopwatch or a kitchen timer
• 🩹 Masking tape, to mark lines
• 🖍️ Crayons or markers

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

1. The evening before, put 15 beans in a cup of water to soak overnight.
2. Next day, put 15 more beans in a second cup of water, and set a timer for four hours.
3. While you wait, fold a damp towel into nine zip bags and label three each: dry, 4 hours, overnight.
4. When the timer rings, put five beans of the right kind on the towel in each bag.
5. Zip each bag almost shut, and tape all nine to a wall in one warm room, out of direct sun.
6. Every day, add a few drops of water to any dry towel, and tell a grown-up if a bag smells bad.
7. Every day, count the beans in each bag with a little white root poking out.
8. On day four, write each bag's count in your table.
9. Keep counting until day seven, to see if the slow beans catch up.
10. Draw a bar graph of beans sprouted for each soaking time.
11. Wash your hands after touching the beans, and never eat them.

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

I changed: Soaking time   I measured: how many of the five beans have sprouted by day four (beans sprouted, of 5)

MY GRAPH (a bar graph: soaking time along the bottom, beans 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 the beans for 2, 8 and 24 hours, and draw a line of how many have sprouted each day.

1. What made you want to ask this question? Say something like: I wanted to know: do soaked beans sprout faster?
2. What did you think would happen, and why? Say something like: I thought changing how long the beans are soaked first would change how many of the five beans 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 long the beans are soaked first (Not soaked, Soaked 4 hours, Soaked overnight) and measured how many of the five beans have sprouted by day four in beans sprouted, of 5.
4. What did you keep the same, and why does that matter? Say something like: I kept the same kind of bean and five beans and a damp towel in every bag the same, so only how long the beans are soaked first 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: Not soaked and Soaked overnight 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 the beans for 2, 8 and 24 hours, and draw a line of how many have sprouted each day.