🌡️ Seeds, warmth and sprouting: the whole packet

🌡️ Seeds, warmth and sprouting · 3rd–7th 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 warm the place is where the beans sit, 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
• 🥣 A big bowl: 1, for soaking
• 🛍️ Plastic bags: 9 zip bags
• 🧻 Paper towels
• 🛍️ A paper lunch bag: 3
• 🌡️ A thermometer (digital, or the red-liquid kind)
• 🚰 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. Soak 45 beans in a big bowl of water overnight.
2. Fold a damp paper towel into each of nine zip bags.
3. Put five soaked beans on the towel in each bag, and zip it almost shut.
4. Put three bags in each of three paper lunch bags, and label them fridge, room and top.
5. Put one lunch bag in the fridge, one on a room shelf and one on top of the fridge.
6. Never put the beans near an oven or a heater, because too much heat can spoil them.
7. Leave the thermometer at each spot for ten minutes, and write down the temperature.
8. Every day, add a few drops of water to any dry towel, and tell a grown-up if a bag smells bad.
9. Every day, count the beans in each bag with a little white root poking out.
10. On day four, write each bag's count in your table.
11. Keep counting until day seven, to see if the cold beans ever wake up.
12. Find the mean count for each spot and draw a bar graph.
13. 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: Where the beans sit   I measured: how many of the five beans have sprouted by day four (beans sprouted, of 5)

MY GRAPH (a bar graph: where the beans sit 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: add a fourth spot, such as a cool windowsill, and graph the beans sprouted against each spot's measured temperature.

1. What made you want to ask this question? Say something like: I wanted to know: do seeds sprout faster somewhere warm?
2. What did you think would happen, and why? Say something like: I thought changing how warm the place is where the beans sit 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 warm the place is where the beans sit (In the fridge, On a room shelf, On top of the fridge) 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, soaked overnight and five beans and a damp towel in every bag the same, so only how warm the place is where the beans sit 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: In the fridge and On top of the fridge 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: add a fourth spot, such as a cool windowsill, and graph the beans sprouted against each spot's measured temperature.