Name: __________________
Date: __________________
Water Tolerance Study Guide
1. What are some environmental factors that may make plants grow differently?
A: sun, water, air (pollution), temperature, soil, moisture
2. What does “range of tolerance” mean?
A: is the range of an environmental factor that an organism “can handle”
For example, the range of tolerance for temperature for our aquariums may be 55*
to 80*, or plants need about 6-12 hours of sunlight per day. If an organism is in conditions
beyond their range of tolerance, they will likely not survive.
3. The environment that is most favorable to help to an organism’s survival is when it’s in its
Optimum Conditions/Environment (2 words)
4. True or False: If the range of tolerance for fish water is 65* - 85*, the optimum temperature
could be 93* (* means degrees in Fahrenheit)
A: False
5. What was the range of tolerance for our plants in our experiment? (hint: our plants were
planted in a moist, wet, very wet, and swamp environments)
A: moist environment to a very wet environment our seeds could grow
6. A controlled experiment is when you only change one thing at a time. For example, in our
experiment, we only changed the amount of water the seeds received. They all received the
same amount of light, we planted the same type and amount of seeds in each cup, and we used
the same soil.
*You will need to look at a chart and figure out if the experiment was a controlled
experiment (we will discuss this more on Monday)!
You will have to look at a chart/table and answer a few questions. Use the following graph and
questions as an example: A student wanted to measure the effect of the amount of water in mL
is needed to grow the roots of radish seeds the longest. Below are two charts. Chart 1 includes
how much water each pot of radish seeds received. Chart 2 includes how long the roots grew of
each pot/seeds.
Chart 1:
Chart 2
25
8
20
6
15
Pot #
10
4
Pot #
2
5
0
0
1
2
3
4
5
1
2
3
4
5
Questions:
1. What is the optimum (best) amount of water that a radish needs to grow long roots? (Hint:
Which pot grew the best – how much water did it get?)
a. 5 mL of water
b. 15 mL of water
c. 25 mL of water
2. Which two pots did not grow any roots?
a. pots 1 and 5
b. pots 3 and 4
c. pots 2 and 3
3. How much water was too much for the plants to grow? (beyond what the plant could
tolerate?)
a. 10 mL of water
b. 20 mL of water
c. 25 mL of water