A. Question, research, hypothesis 

Question: Does caffeine affect plant growth?

Hypothesis: My educated guess would be using caffeine will make the process of the seeds grow faster/ better in soil than just using tap water to water it.

My explanation as to why using caffeine will make the process of a plant growth faster/better in soil than just using water is because caffeine has a lot of ingrediencies in it such as potassium, phosphorus, vitamins and fertilizers that a plant needs help to grow. Water is just H2O , Fertilizers on the other hand are made from high nitrogen to increase a faster and healthier of a plant’s growth. Another explanation is we looked up images of plants watered with water and watered with coffee. My partner and I saw that it seemed like watering it with coffee looked alot better and healthier and the growth of the mung bean seed grew alot bigger than watering the seed with just water. So that is why my hypothesis is using caffiene will make the process of the seeds grow faster/better.

Research questions: 

What are effects on using caffeine for plant growth?

Positive effects:

– Using caffeine can make the procedure of photosynthesis of plants faster

– It can make plants look a lot prettier and healthier

– Clean the garden that has full of pests; coffee ground reduces the number of pests in a plant

– Caffeine has potassium and phosphorus which can also be key ingredients in coffee that help plants grow.

Negative effects:

– Coffee can either help or hurt your garden, depending on how much you use.

– It can turn a plant yellow if theirs too much acidic in the soil

– Most plants don’t like acidic substance in their soil so it’s best not to put it in their soil to prevent it from dying

What are the benefits of using coffee to grow plants?

– Coffee beans contain a lot of calcium, sugar, copper, magnesium, carbohydrates, and other vitamins inside.

– Coffee beans contains nitrogen which is the function of sunlight being changed into energy.

– Potassium; moisturizes plants through photosynthesis

– Phosphorus; helps energy enter through the roots and cells of a plant which is essential for fertilizer.

– waste of caffeine = fertilizer; prevents pests on plants to grow faster and better

9/19/19

B. Plan

Investigation Plan: 

1. Buy the Mung beans seeds
2. Soak Mung beans in water for 12 hours
3. Fill the container with dirt
4. Put seeds in dirt
5. Water seeds with Coffee, and one with water every week
6. Record Data

Materials:

– 2 big Plastic containers

– Mung bean seeds

– Coffee grounds

– Tap water

Recording Equipment:

– Phone

-Pencil & Paper

-Ruler

Safety concerns or risks

The risk with watering a plant with caffeine is it will die if the soil is too acidic. It turns yellow if there is too much acidic in the soil. So, it’s better to not water plants that do not like acidic soil in it at all. Another risk is if we are not careful with the amount of caffeine we put in the soil the mung beans that are being watered by coffee might die. Other than the plants being at risk, nothing else seems to be at risk.

Address ethical, cultural and/or environmental issues. Consider First Peoples perspectives and knowledge gained from other subject areas.

The ethical and environmental issues my partner and I have discussed is maybe in the future our water won’t be fresh anymore, and when that happens, we could use another liquid alternative. At first were thinking to use greywater before coffee, but another group decided to do it so then we had to think of another water substitute. When we were on the process of researching new experiments related to plants we found out, watering plants with coffee and that it can benefit the plant if it’s used well and not too much coffee is being added to the soil.  If coffee can benefit our plants more, then it could be a very good substitute for water and plant growth. Coffee can be an environmental issue because it’s harming the environment especially living creatures such as animals. The coffee we don’t finish drinking and we just throw it away down the sink or we can’t consume all the coffee we drink. The excess coffee somehow is making its way into rural streams through urine which is really bad for animals because it can make them sick.

C. Data

These Charts shows the amount of growth of the seed throughtout the 15 days the seeds have been watered with water and coffee. The blue chart indicates water and the orange chart indicates coffee.The x-axis is the day numbers and the y-axis is the cm it has grown.

The original way of recording our experiment was using a pencil, paper, and a ruler. It is a chart that shows the day, and the cm grown in both plants.

We also took pictures of the progress. Below are pictures from Plant 1(water) and Plant 2 (coffee)

Click here to see photos plant growing process

 

D. Analyze 

The relationship between watering the beans with water, and watering them with coffee is that they are both liquid substances being poured into the soil. Water is H20 and coffee also contains H20 since we had to add water to the coffee powder to make it. Even though coffee contains several more dependent variables, in our experiment the plant that was watered in water surpassed the growth of the plant that was watered in coffee. But that doesn’t mean all plants will react the same since we just experiment on one certain type of plant.

The inconsistency I saw by my partner Angela sending me pictures of the progress of the plant was that day 1-3 the plants seem to be at the same growing speed. But on days 4 and 5 the water grew more and the plant watered with coffee had a more faded green color to it. Day 6 the roots of the coffee plant were starting to grow out of the plant above the dirt even though they are supposed to stay under the soil. The same thing did not happen for Plant 1( water), it couldn’t be caused by the soil since both containers had the same amount of soil in it. It was probably because of the coffee substances contained in it causing it to happen to Plant 2 (coffee).

Conclude: 

Part 1:

Our hypothesis was that using coffee will make the process of the seeds grow faster/ better and plant grow faster. As you can see with the images on the docx, the experiment we did proved us wrong because, the bean plants that grew more and bigger were the plants that were watered in water. Plant 2 watered with Water lasted longer than Plant 1 watered with Coffee. Our finding did not support our hypothesis since we were looking to see if the seeds would grow faster/ better not longer, even though it could’ve been the new beneficial way of watering plants that could do so much more than using H20 to water plants.

Part 2:

Watering plants with water is still the better liquid to water your plants with. Over the past 2 weeks, plant 1 has grown surpassing plant 2 and it was very consistent until the end where plant has started to die off. After day 13, plant 2 was still healthy-looking while plant 1 was nearly dying. Even though the coffee lasted longer than the water doesn’t mean it’s better. If you had to grow crops I using coffee is not the best way to go because we didn’t test this plant to eat, so we don’t know if it is better for crops or not. Plant 2 (coffee) changed a different shade than plant 1 (water) and their are many reason that caused it to happen. So if you want ur garden/crops to be safer/healthier, I’d suggest sticking with the watering your plant with water is the best idea.

Part 3:

One of the uncertainties is that bean plants are easier to grow than all of the other plants since they don’t really need sunlight which is a good thing since for the past days of doing the experiment it was raining. The reason why we chose to use mung bean seeds is that they grow really fast and we needed a fast-growing plant for this experiment. It wouldn’t be very accurate because not a lot of plants are like mung beans and are easy to grow. Coffee didn’t benefit bean plants much, but I have no idea about the other plants since we only experimented on one certain plant.

Confusing Variables

Confusing variables involve the growth of the roots in the plant that was watered in coffee. The water plant wasn’t that much longer than the coffee, but you could tell that the roots of the coffee had lot more than the roots of the water plant. Another confusing variable was that the plant that was watered in coffee stayed alive longer than the plant watered in water. Maybe the coffee slowed down the growth of the beans, which can makes them last longer than the one watered in water, or that the coffee includes some type of fertilizer/substance that helps the plant to stay alive much longer.

Improvements needed:

Ways that we could’ve improved in doing this experiment was to discuss more on the data collecting since it took us a long time to figure out how we’ll keep track of our data.  Another improvement we could’ve made was Communicating more. We talked about our experiment sometimes, but we could’ve discussed it more outside of school about this project. The last way we could’ve improved on is probably being able to keep track of the plant more. I was messaging her how the plant was since Angela was the one who took it home because my house was not for a plants living conditions, it needed to be a warm room temperature but my entire house was freezing cold which would not be good for a plant and I wouldn’t be able to monitor it as much as she would since I’m not very good at watering plants and I tend to forget alot.