Leah's Seed Story

1)What have you learned?

Leah learned how to care for a plant, the different types of reactions a plant goes through, how they are a major part of the world, and their interactions to the environment.

2)What's surprised you?

Leah was surprised on how fast her plant grew, and how they had holes in them because bugs were always eating them. Also, she was surprised by all that different cycles the plant was a part of.

3)What made you laugh?

What made her laugh was working with her team mates,i creating all the labs with their plants, and planting them and tending to them. Also, documenting and checking on their cabbage. The whole experience was fun and memorable.

4)What caused you to think a little deeper?

What made her think more was all the labs they did with their pants because before that she had no idea what went on inside of plants. All of the labs and lessons helped open my eyes to see how much plants go through and how they contribute a lot to the environment we live in.

5)Questions you have?

How did the chickens escape their coop? How did our plants grow so quickly?

Grace Slone's interview

Grace Slone’s story of the seed interview: blog post #5

By Gabriella Lasserre, P-1

For this blog post, I interviewed Grace Slone from our first period class. Upon asking her what she learned so far in this class this semester, she said she learned that competition doesn’t necessarily mean the consumption of one organism by another. The thing that surprised Grace was that in our first experiment, when we added chlorophyll to the mix the plant did not grow. What made Grace think deeper was how all organisms and chemical cycles are related and have an affect on one another. Something that made Grace laugh in the class was how everyone was lighthearted and kind, and always cracking jokes to lighten the mood. Overall, Grace had a good experience in the first semester of honors biology and learned many new things she didn’t know before.     

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Sam's Seed Story

What have you learned?

"I learned about the carbon cycle, water cycle, nitrogen cycle, competition between plants in the garden, and how seeds germinate."

What surprised or amazed you?

"I was surprised that plants can grow in a variety of different condition whether it's in competition, upside-down, or in limited space."


What made you laugh?

"I laughed when I found out how much grass we had to cut because I thought it was excessive."

What made you pause and think a little deeper?

"When my kohlrabi plant wasn't growing as fast or as much as the other plants I had to think what factors were affecting it."`

Sydney's Seed Story

            Sydney has learned many thing while doing her seed project like how plants need light, carbon dioxide, and water to grow correctly and that if you add more chlorophyll to your plant it will not grow. What made her laugh was naming her plants and messing around with her friends in this group. Some things that surprised her is that her plants took 5 days to sprout and that breaking the ends of the roots on there plants they still grew. While she was doing her project a few things made think deep like how long does plants take to fully grow up and how making plants work you need a constant supply of water and carbon dioxide.

Enzyme Lab Report

Group 1-1 Names

JT Wellman,  Gabriella Lasserre, Katarina Myers,  Lupe Castillo

Introduction:

In this lab, we decided to investigate the effect of environment factors on the enzyme hydrogen peroxidase. To do that we decided to test the substrate concentration and how it affects the enzyme’s productivity. For this we used ripgut brome grass(bromus diandrus), substrate and water.

Materials:

• 5 to 10 grams of freshly picked ripgut brome grass (Bromus diandrus) blades (about 1 handful)
• Digital balance (scale)
• Mortar and pestle
• 3 100-liter glass or plastic beakers
• 1 mL or 5 mL syringe
• Hydrogen peroxide
• Glass test tubes
• Test tube rack or holder
• Safety glasses

Procedure:

1) Gather materials

2) Put on safety glasses

3) Set up your lab with materials.

4) Weigh the brome grass to make sure it is between 5 to 10 grams

5) Grind the grass with the mortar and pestle

6) Pour the solution into 5 test tubes

7)Then we pour different amounts of the hydrogen peroxide ( 10%, 20%, 40%, 50%, 80% ) in the test tubes

8) Measure and record the height of the reaction

9) Write data results and conclusion

Hypothesis

If the substrate concentration increases then the rate of enzymatic reactions will increase to a certain point then steady out.

Independent Variable: substrate concentration

Dependent Variable: peroxidase

Controlled Variables: temperature, pH, enzyme concentration

We chose this because when substrate concentration goes higher, it increases enzyme productivity because there are more substrates to work on.

Summary:

We are going to test how enzymes are affected when the controlled variable of substrate is added to the equation. We will be testing this by running 5 different experiments and placing varying amounts of hydrogen peroxide in each to see the result and record it.

Data and Results:

At 80% of substrate concentration with 5 ml of enzymes solution we found that we had 6 ml of peroxidase in 10 minutes. At 50% of substrate concentration with 5 ml of enzymes solution we found that we had 9 ml of peroxidase in 10 minutes. At 40% of substrate concentration with 5 ml of enzymes solution we found that we had 10 ml of peroxidase. At 20% substrate concentration with 5 ml of enzymes solution we found that we had 8 ml of peroxidase in 10 minutes. At 10% of substrate concentration with 5 ml of enzymes solution we found that we had  3.5 ml of peroxidase in 10 minutes.

Conclusions:

Many steps were taken in order for us to achieve our results for this lab. By the end of the lab, we analyzed the results and concluded that increasing substrate concentration increases enzyme productivity. However, at a certain point, the productivity decreases. As seen in our data, we got the most results of ml of peroxidase at 50% substrate concentration. 50% substrate concentration gave us 9ml of peroxidase.

Ecoclogical analysis of the garden

What are some abiotic factors on which your plant depends for its survival? What about biotic factors that affect your plant? Describe some of these factors
Some abiotic factors our plant depended on to survive were soil, sunlight, water, temperature/climate. Some biotic factors are other plants competing for nutrients, sunlight, space, water, as well as other abiotic factors and also if the plants are receiving enough nutrients.
How do you know your plants are engaged in competition? For what are your plants competing, and who is the competition?
Yes, my plant is engaged in competition. I know this because the space in which it was planted was a tightly constructed planter box. It was also planted with many other plants, so they are all competing for the abiotic factors i stated above against the other plants with them.
How are "winners" and "losers" determined in this struggle? Is it always so clear cut who "wins" and who "loses?" What makes that determination complicated sometimes?
It is not always definite which plants lose or win, since some plants have a life cycle shorter than that of another plant in competition of them. Ususally the plants that are the healthiest and grow the tallest or widest are the "winners" of the competition. Those who look malnourished, shorter or smaller are are the "losers" of the competition.
Describe other types of interaction (besides competition) in which your plants are involved. Make sure to explain how this interaction affects each organism involved.
Some plant and animals both benefit from being with each other, which is mutualism. An example of that happening with the plants in our garden is the bees taking the pollen from the plants, so the plants can more easily produce pollen quicker.  However, sometimes plants are harmed when working with another organism, because one organism is benefiting while the other is negatively affected. An example of this is aphids feeding on a plant. They are weakening the plant and take away the nutrients the plant needs to survive.
What evidence is there in the garden that succession (or something like it) is occurring in the garden ecosystem? Does it seem more like primary or secondary succession?
Succession can be noticed in an environment when new organisms grow on a land that had been previously housing other living plants that gt destroyed. Our plants are more secondary succession, because gardens had been planted where they are now previously and the plats had died or been transported somewhere else. It would not have been primary succession because that would mean that our plants started on fresh, brand new ground.

Analysis of garden JT

1. What are some abiotic factors on which your plant depends for its survival? What about biotic factors that affect your plant? Describe some of these factor
Factors our plant depends on are rocks, dirt, and sunlight and most important water. Some plants are better placed as others. Like so a desert but lucky for our plants they are in a rose bin but it sill has abiotic and biotic factors. Some biotic factors that affect our plant are others plants, insects and birds and the chicken, they are in there coop next to our project. our plants are always engaged in different types of interaction.
2. How do you know your plants are engaged in competition? For what are your plants competing, and who is the competition?
Our plant is almost always in competition. We know by Different plants in the garden have the same biological niche as ours, and their are limited resources in the garden. The plants are competing for many things, including water, sunlight, and space. Space is very limited in the rose box, so it is one of the resources that is most competed for. The limited space also has an affect amount of sunlight available to our plants, because taller, more spread out plants could block other plants from getting any sunlight.
3. How are "winners" and "losers" determined in this struggle? Is it always so clear cut who "wins" and who "loses?" What makes that determination complicated sometimes?
Almost all plants can be a winner or a loser. Winners can be determined by which plant grows fully for as long as it can. Losers would be smaller plants that can’t get the resources they need, and therefore die first. It is not always clear cut as to who wins and who loses. It can be complicated because some plants naturally die faster than others. Other plants don’t grow very big, but are still winning against much bigger plants.
4. Describe other types of interaction (besides competition) in which your plants are involved. Make sure to explain how this interaction affects each organism involved.
One other interaction is pollination from bees. This is mutualism because the bees help the plants reproduce by pollinating them, and the plants produce nectar for the bees to eat. Another example could be insects including wormss that feed off of the plants. This relationship would be parasitic.
5. What evidence is there in the garden that succession (or something like it) is occurring in the garden ecosystem? Does it seem more like primary or secondary succession?
the plants are adapting to the garden ecosystem and growing where there was a existing garden. It seems more like secondary succession because primary succession starts on freash/new land. Secondary succession happens when there was already a community that was destroyed, like in the garden.