Our group decide to test if soil density can affect how a plant grows? Our hypothesis was yes it would affect the plant, here are some predictions, yes because the denser the soil, the more difficult it would be for the plant to push through to the surface, yes because the plant can grow in a different position which can affect or damage the plant. Yes, because denser soil means there is more soil in the area, making it have more nutrients that the plant can has access to.

In this project we got four pots and the half are compressed and the other half are normally planted. The plants were placed on a window sill so it can also get some natural sun light. Our equipment that we used was water, red cup, polo beans, Promix soil, ruler, and a lamp. We used a red cup to hold the beans and soil. We used the lamp whenever it got dark outside and also to give the plants some warmth. We water the plants every day, we water the plants to one to two inches. Later on in the project we will find out if our hypothesis is correct or wrong. In this experiment we don’t believe that there will be any risk involved. One risk is if one of the plants snap apart during the experiment, which could cause us some trouble. There are no safety concerns involved with this experiment.  Some environmental issues are when soil gets compacted while the plants are growing which could affect how the plants growth. Such as the height of the plant, the size, and much others. It can also affect the taste if you are growing a type of food which can have a weird taste.

Considering that the plants aren’t affected by how compact the soil is, that can make something like sustainability better, since that means that you are able to grow plants in most places, not depending on whether or not the soil is loose or hard. You would just have a better chance growing them in loose soil. We thought of a relationship between the variables of our project as well, a relationship between variables is with the different dirt densities and seeds, because if you had a denser soil and a harder to grow seed, the plant would take longer to grow. An inconsistency would be the plant heights, since some of the plants are past 14cm while others are under 14cm. This is the chart we made for our experiment, it lists the days from one to twelve, all showing the height of the plants:

Plant Height Per Day

From looking at it, the compressed dirt had smaller plants, while the loose dirt had taller plants, not by much, but still enough for a noticeable difference. Finally, in conclusion, the soil density does not seem to have too big of an effect on how the plants grow, but it does still affect it. We also did a quick analysis of the cause-and-effect of our experiment, if the soil is dense, it makes the plant grow slower, while in loose soil, the plants grew taller.

Did my findings support my hypothesis? Yes they did, in the end the compacted dirt did make the plant grow decently smaller than the ones with loose dirt. One of the hypothesis that were wrong was about how the compacted dirt plants would grow sideways, instead they all grew straight up. Now, for some of the methods we used. Perhaps some of the errors or uncertainties could be that the plants could have gotten more sunlight than others, or the soil density could have changed mid-experiment, though there aren’t too many variables that could change drastically. As for confounding variables, I don’t believe we had any. There was an idea of an alternative conclusion though, it could be that potentially, the compacted dirt didn’t affect the plant growth, considering one of the plants in loose dirt is the smallest one of all the plants. We also thought of a few ways to improve our investigation, we could possibly use lights instead of sunlight to be completely sure that all the plants get an equal amount of light, and we could also try feeding the plants to make them grow faster for better and more accurate results.