Comparing Plant Growth

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Learning Objectives:

• Design and conduct an experiment to test plant growth in different growing conditions.
• Measure and record different properties of plants.
• Organize and analyze data to determine a relationship between plant growth and growing conditions.

Teacher Background:

Designing and conducting an investigation to compare the growth of aquatic plants in different environmental conditions is a great way to explore both science and math concepts. In science, data must be both valid and reliable. Valid data are relevant to the goal of the investigation, while reliable data give the same results repeatedly. Math skills are used for measuring plant growth, understanding the rate of growth, and creating graphs from numerical data. Plant growth can be measured in a number of ways, including plant height, width, number of leaves, or surface area of leaves. Growth rate is the amount of plant growth per unit of time. Rates are often represented with line graphs, with time on the x-axis and growth measurement on the y-axis. A smooth line can be used to connect data points to approximate the rate of growth.

In this lesson, students grow aquatic plants under different environmental conditions (low light, high light, cool temperatures, warm temperatures), and measure and graph the growth of the plants over time. Students can measure height and width of each plant; older students can also measure the surface area of the leaves of each plant.

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