Photosynthesis At Work and a Little Plant Tropism By Nia

Mung bean sprouts alive and well!

During science this week, we started some bean sprouts, which have grown at a startlingly fast rate. At first, we wanted to see what would happen if we covered the seeds so that they had no sunlight at all. The results were quite interesting. The sprouts looked smothered and were not green like the sprouts shown below. After a little while, we decided to just leave the sprouts by the window to see what would happen. Many of us predicted that the plants would turn green, because of all the chlorophyll made by the plant.

Potato set up for plant tropism

We also noticed that the sprouts along with the other plants we are growing were leaning toward the light. We are also doing a potato maze. Our potato maze features one hole in the box for sunlight, some soil, and barriers for the potatoes roots to go around. We are conducting this experiment to see if the potatoes roots will go around the barriers, and as close to the hole in the box as possible. The class has been making some observations, and we have concluded that all our plants are leaning toward the sunlight because, every plant needs the sunlight to help make chloroplast, which is a substance similar to sugar, that the plant eats. We have also just planted some lettuce, which is very small right now, but we hope that they will grow to be very big. We also think that just like the sprouts, the lettuce will start to lean towards the light.



Just recently we have acquired a deadly looking, plant-like organism. I am not quite sure what it is actually, but there are some students who were in a group together, and they concluded that it might float if put in water, it also might open up, or even start to grow again, if put in water. They also observed that there are some green parts on the mystery item, as well as roots, so it looked like it had been pulled out of the ground. The whole class is very excited to find out more about the life of our class garden!

Can you guess what kind of plant this is?