Title: Growing Tomatoes with Different Light Sources
Purpose: To determine which light, fluorescent, incandescent, or
natural tomatoes grow best under.
Hypothesis: If tomatoes are grown under natural sunlight, then they
will grow better than other tomatoes under incandescent and
fluorescent light.
Materials:
1. 48 Tomatoes seeds
2. Potting Soil
3. 40 watt fluorescent light
4. 25 watt incandescent light
5. Sun’s light
6. Water
7. 12 flower pots with holes in the bottom for drainage
8. 2 automatic timers
9. Shovel
10.
Cardboard
11.
Seed starter
12.
Fish tank with screen cover
13.
Ruler
14.
Space in the greenhouse
15.
Tape
16.
Digital Camera
17.
3 ½ floppy disk
18.
Scissors
19.
Fingers
20.
Graduated cylinder
21.
Paper towels
Procedure:
1. Write names and period on tape.
2. Stick piece of tape with names and period on all materials.
3. Make 12 labels with tape for the 12 pots (incandescent 1, 2, 3, 4 and
same for sunlight and fluorescent).
4. Pour 10 times as much potting soil as seed starter into a bucket.
5. Mix it with a shovel.
6. Water the soil so it is moist. Not as dry as it was when it came out
of the bag, but not soaking wet either.
7. Pour the mixture equally into the 12 pots 1” from the top of it.
8. Take fingers and poke 4 holes (¼” down and 1” apart) into the soil
in each of the 12 pots.
9. Put 1 tomato seed in each hole and cover it lightly with soil.
10.
Water the soil of the 12 pots with 10 milliliters of water
(measured in the graduated cylinder).
11.
Cut the cardboard with the scissors so each piece can cover a
side of the fish tank.
12.
Tape the cardboard to cover the whole fish tank, so that no light
can seep in.
13.
Line the bottom of the fish tank with paper towels.
14.
Put 4 of the planted pots into the fish tank.
15.
Place the cover on the fish tank.
16.
Put the incandescent light on the top.
17.
Set up the automatic timer so that it will be on for 12 hours a
day, from 6 AM to 6 PM.
18.
Plug the incandescent light into the automatic timer.
19.
Plug the timer into a nearby outlet.
20.
Turn the incandescent light on.
21.
For the fluorescent lights, cover a frame of a shelf (that has the
lights on it) with cardboard so that no light can seep through.
22.
Put 4 more of the planted pots in a small cardboard box.
23.
Place the box with the plants in it under the cardboard shield in
the fluorescent light.
24.
Set up the automatic timer on that light as instructed in steps 17-
20.
25.
Put the last 4 planted pots in the greenhouse in a place where
they can absorb the sunlight.
26.
Every other day, water the plants as needed.
27.
Every second or third day, record how tall the plants are in
centimeters.
28.
Every time you record observations, count how many leave pairs
are on each plant.
29.
About once a week take pictures of your plant’s progress with a
digital camera and keep the disk with your observations.