Lab Report- Bamboo Life

Guiding Question: How does the type of substrate affect the growth and living of a bamboo?

Hypothesis: I think that the substrate affects the growth of a plant. Only soil as a substrate will make the growth rate of the bamboo decrease. Rock, some soil and water will increase the growth rate but not a lot. Normal water (which is normal for the bamboo) won’t affect it a lot because it is its normal rate.

Materials: bamboo, rock, soil, water and vase (any type of recipient)

Variables:

***Controlled: amount of water, temperature, amount of sunlight, oxygen available

***Manipulated: substrate (soil and water; rock, soil and water; water)

Procedure:

1)    Set up the different recipients with bamboo and the different types of substrate

2)    Put them all together making sure nothing is different between them

3)    Measure leaves and stock on first day

4)    Record and observe during the following days by pulling the leaves up

5)    Make a chart showing the growth

Data Collection:

(Observations)

For now the bamboo are surviving, not one is yellow. On the bamboo which has rocks, soil and water is growing roots at the sides. The one who grew the most is the soil and water one. The one who grew less is the one with only water. Soils and water grew 7 centimeters more; the water, rocks and soil grew 4 centimeters and the one with only water grew only 2 centimeters.

It is now Day 8 and the tallest one is the one with rocks, water and soil. It grew 6.5 cm in 2 days. For now I can tell that the one with only water didn’t grow a lot.

Day 12:

·         Soil and water: 120 cm

·         Water, rocks and soil: 114.2 cm

·         Only water: 85.1 cm

Day 14:

The water, soil and rock one is growing, but today I had some problems measuring it because the other two are shorter than last time. I think that the soil and water one could have settled in.

Day 17:

All of them are growing at a more-or-less steady rate.

What I noticed since the beginning is that all the bamboos with different types of substrate grew much faster, meanwhile now they’re growing at a steady rate but not much.

Presentation of Data:

(Graph)

Data Analysis:

My aim of this experiment is/was to see which substrate makes the bamboo grow at a faster rate.

My graphs show how much a bamboo with the different substrate grow in 17 days; even though not all of them had the same height at the beginning to understand which substrate made the bamboo grow faster and more in those days I subtracted the height of the bamboo on the 17^th day by the height of the same bamboo on the first day.

The one which grew less was the one with only water. The second one was the one with soil and water and the one which grew more in 17 days was the bamboo with rocks, soil and water. It grew 14.1 centimeters! So if it grew at a steady rate it grew 2.014 each day.

Bamboo	Only Water	Soil and Water	Rocks, Water and Soil
cm of total growth	4 cm	10.5 cm	14.1 cm

Conclusion:

What I think made the bamboo with rocks, soil and water grew faster was that the rocks were keeping the water at a certain level so that not much was absorbed by the soil. Since not much was absorbed by the soil the water was able to reach the roots. Also, the bamboo with only water couldn’t absorb the minerals present in the soil, which is richer in minerals than water. In the sample where there have been also rocks, the corrosion of water in the rocks might have brought into the water more minerals needed for the bamboo growth. So the conclusion is: the more environmental biotic and abiotic factors there are the more minerals are found, so the plant’s (in this case the bamboo) growth increases faster.

Further Inquiry:

If I was able to make another sample I would either made it with sand and water or with rocks and water.  

What I noticed in this experiment is that in the very first 5 days it grew for each one of them a lot, but then it slowed down. One possible reason of this is because the heat, since my project started when the heaters in the room were off, after a few days they were turned on.