03.18.2016
Written By: Joseph DeWilde
In the last lesson, we finished a long-term experiment in which the effect of light and seed placement on radish growth was measured. This set-up gave the students an opportunity to fully design their own experiments, develop hypotheses, and analyze their results. For this experiment, we recalled our previous experiments covering light, waves, and absorption to encourage the students to make hypotheses over what type of light (colors, multiple filters, polarized) would allow for the best plant growth. We also asked the students to define how they plan to measure plant growth (height of plant, size of radish, number of seeds, weight of roots, etc.) and how frequently they planned to measure them. In a session two weeks later, the students tallied up the results and presented their conclusions informally to the rest of the class. In the future, I hope to allow the students to pick even more types of non-light variables to open up any avenue they wish to pursue. Additionally, future experiments should be conducted over a longer period than two weeks so the students can actually take their grown radishes home. While these sessions were a bit calmer than our average experiments, I think they really explored the scientific method for this one and it allowed the students to get more creative!