What did you do?
For pre-trials, we conducted our experiment as originally planned. We started by soaking 80 seeds (40 in the control group and 40 in the treatment group) overnight in 100 mL of either plain water or “wastewater”, water that had ibuprofen added to it. We then prepared twenty petri-dishes with a paper towel floor and we poured water into them, making sure to dump out the excess water in the dishes. We put four radish seeds in each petri-dish and then left them to grow for one week. What worked? Our experimental setup went smoothly, and we were able to conduct our trials as planned. While we were originally unsure whether or not we were allowing the plants enough time to grow, one week turned out to be plenty of time for the radish roots to grow a decent amount. What didn’t work? One of the only issues we ran into was that after one week of sitting out, the paper towel lining each petri dish was very dry, and as a result many of the plants were small and dry. Another problem we encountered was that a few of the seeds in each experimental group didn’t germinate. What improvements are you going to make? In our normal trials, we are going to make sure to keep the excess water from the original application in the petri-dishes, so that the radish seeds can grow to their full ability over the course of one week. We are also going to make sure that we are more careful in the selection process of what seeds get put into the petri-dishes, so that there are not any seed-shells being mistaken for seeds alone in the future.
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How did we pick our topic?
We were inspired to work with this topic after reading a study conducted by the University of Exeter, “Drugs in the environment affect plant growth.” They concluded that the commonly used drugs that are flushed into the environment do have a significant effect on plant growth, and we were interested in conducting a similar experiment to see if our study would yield similar results. As people start to use more and more NSAIDs, such as commonly used pain-relief drugs like ibuprofen, more commonly known as Motrin or Advil, we become more immune to the effects. We were intrigued to find out if this effect is a cause of the food we’re eating, but first we need to conclude if the food itself is affected by the drugs at all. How did our sources shape our topic? Our best resource for finding helpful articles was Google Scholar. Through this site, we found many scientific studies, specifically apart of journals, that helped provide a basis for our research and insight into how to set up our experiment. Research Plans As far as planning for our research, we will gather all the materials we need including radish seeds, ibuprofen, and petri dishes. For a professional contact, we plan to get in touch with someone who works in wastewater treatment and management to get more insight into the practical application of this research. |
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