Joseph Hudak Period 3
Materials and Procedure for Major Project
March 18, 2010
Materials:
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2 Bags of Moisture Holding Soil
108 Square 2 inch by 2 inch Peat Moss Pots
2 Packages of Red Sparkler White Tip Radish
18 Plastic Containers (No Lids needed)
1 Shelving Unit with Three Shelves and Three Grow-lights
3-10 Empty One Gallon Jugs
200g of NaCL, 200g of KCL, and 130g of CaCL
5-7 Gallons of Purified Spring Water
1 2-Liter Graduated Cylinder
7 Small Plastic Bottles/Cups
1 Metric Scale
1 Spray Bottle
1 Roll of Paper Towels
1-6 Cookie Sheets
Tissue Paper to Cover 1-6 Cookie Sheets
Pencil and Paper
Procedure:
1. Gather all materials.
2. Find a place where you can water the plants easily, the plants won’t get bothered, and the
temperature is roughly 70 degrees Fahrenheit.
3. Mix your solutions using a ratio of 10ml of water for every 1g of salt, creating a 10% solution. In
this case, 200g equals 2000ml of water (1 liter).
4. Mix thoroughly.
5. Now, you must dilute your solution. For this, you must use a ratio of 1ml of solution in every
10ml of water, to create a 1% solution. You should use 200ml of 10% solution and 1800ml of
water.
6. Along with this you must create a 0.1% solution using 1 ml of 10% solution in every 100ml of
water. You should use 20ml of 10% solution and 1980ml of water.
7. Place dirt into your pots, placing them in their corresponding trays, 6 pots per tray, and 6 trays
per shelf.
8. Place 4 seeds into each pot, 1 in each corner.
9. Cover the seeds with dirt.
10. Label the trays:
- Control A Top
- Control A Bottom
- Control B Top
- Control B Bottom
- Control C Top
- Control C Bottom
- NaCL 1% Top
- NaCL 1% Bottom
- NaCL 0.1% Top
- NaCL 0.1% Bottom
- CaCL 1% Top
- CaCL 1% Bottom
- CaCL 0.1% Top
- CaCL 0.1% Bottom
- KCL 1% Top
- KCL 1% Bottom
- KCL 0.1% Top
- KCL 0.1% Bottom
11. Place Control A and the NaCL trays on the top shelf, Control B and CaCL trays on the middle
shelf, and Control C and KCL trays on the bottom shelf.
12. Water all of the plants for the first time. Water the plants labeled “Top” by pouring water on the
top of the pot until the water begins to pool slightly on the top. Water the plants labeled
“Bottom” by placing the pots in the corresponding solutions. The solutions that the plants are
placed into should have a height of roughly ½”. The “Bottom” plants should be in the water for
roughly 5-10 minutes.
13. Repeat this process daily for roughly 20-30 days.
14. When you run out of the corresponding solutions, you must water all of them with purified
spring water.
15. Carefully pull all of your plants out of their pots.
16. Keep all of them in their trays.
17. Gently spray each plant with tap water to rinse off any dirt.
18. Pat the plants dry with paper towels and place them back into their trays.
19. Carefully place each plant onto the scale, weighing what is called the wet mass.
20. Record the weights in a notebook, keeping all of the weights with the corresponding trays.
21. Take out 1-6 cookie sheets, depending on the number of plants that grew.
22. Place tissue paper on the cookie sheet(s).
23. Place the plants onto the cookie sheet(s), keeping all of the trays separated.
24. Place the cookie sheets into an oven at 200 degrees Fahrenheit for 10-60 minutes, depending on
how wet the plants were.
25. After the plants are dried, weigh each plant separately and record the weights as before.
26. Place all of your weights into an Excel spreadsheet and run an ANOVA single factor to compare
the differences between the control and NaCL/CaCL/KCL top or bottom trays. Also, you must run
an ANOVA double factor to compare the differences between the control and NaCL/CaCL/KCL
top and the control and NaCL/CaCL/KCL bottom trays. The double factor ANOVA determines if
the salt had a bigger difference being given to the plant from the top or the bottom.