Reflections

Luka and Adrian 7A

Due: Oct 22, 2010

World in a Bottle Lab

I. Guiding Question:
How does a plant survive when planted and grown in a closed ecosystem compared to a plant that is transferred from open ecosystem to a closed ecosystem?

II. Hypothesis:  I think that the plant that is planted and grown in a closed ecosystem will survive better than the transferred plant, because it has been adapted to the closed ecosystem its whole life, while the plant that was grown in an open ecosystem then transferred to the closed ecosystem has to re-adapt to new conditions.

III.  Materials:

• Gravel
• Soil
• Plastic spoon
• Measuring gup
• Large rubber band
• One red gardenia flower
• 2 Beans
• Plastic wrap
• 2 liter clear plastic bottle

       
 IV: Procedure

1.   Cut a the top off of 2 large 2 liter bottles

2.   Fill the bottom layer of both bottles with about 1.5 inches of gravel

3.   On top of the gravel, add about 3 inches of soil.

4.   In one of the bottles, dig two small holes in the soil with your hands, and put one bean in each hole. Recover the holes with soil afterwards.

5.   Dig up a gardenia that is about 3-5 inches tall from somwhere out in the open. Make sure to include the roots when you’re digging.

6.   In the bottle that you haven’t planted anything yet, dig a larger hole, put in the gardenia, and fill in the hole. Make sure none of the roots are sticking out.

7.   Give each plant 10 ml of water. Make sure to measure the amount each time with a measuring cup.

8.   When you are done watering, put plastic wrap over the top of the bottle and let the plastic wrap be big enough to run over the sides a bit. Make sure the bottle is sealed.

9.   Use rubber bands to secure the plastic wrap around the sides.

10.               Every week or so, give the plant 10mL of water if necessary and make observations.

V.  Record & Analyze                     

Date
Beginning	We first started our experiment by digging up a beet and putting it in one bottle and planting radish seeds in the other bottle. A few days later, the plant received about 10 mL of water. The Plants were then left alone for about 1.5 weeks. When we checked the bottles later, the seeds had not grown and our beet had rotted. Then we got rid of the seeds and put in beans instead. We also threw away our beet and put in a gardenia flower instead.
Oct. 11	Our bean had a tiny little sprout, which was great. Our beet plant had a tiny little sprout from the existing stem. I also added 10mL of water to each plant.
Oct. 20	This time, our gardenia had a few tiny little sprouts coming from the side of a dead-looking stem. It was pink near beginning and greener the further it went out. It was about about 3.5 cm in length. Our beanshad 3 tall sprouts. The tallest was about 18 cm from the ground. The shells of the beans that they were grown from were easily visible at the top of all 3 sprouts. The roots of the sprouts where partially in the air and partially in the ground. For 2 of the sprouts the roots were mostly in the air, which makes the plants wobbly which was worrying.

Extra:
Other Group’s Observations
More nutrients in soil than desert sand
Roots also better in normal soil than desert sand
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The less plants in the bottle, the better, because there is less competition for resources and space.
The less plants, the more organized the roots and the less they come out of the soil
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first nothing was growing. The moss was there and mold started  growing on the seeds. Roots started growing in Jude’s bottle but then died out. While Jan’s bottle started growing some small plants. Variable: One has gravel the other has desert sand.
The addition of gravel or sand for drainage affects the amount of mold
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Analysis of Data:  What happened? At first our plants weren’t growing at all but then, after we replaced the unsuccessful plants with plants that were more likely to thrive, the new plants grew successfully. We had 2 plants, 1 that started out in the open and got moved into the bottle (the gardenia), and and a few that were “born” and grown in the bottle (bean sprouts). Our largest bean is 18cm tall. Our gardenia looked dead at first, but it actually had a small sprout growing out of its stem. The sprout didn’t really  grow into a branch but still shows some sign of life.

Do you see any patterns? In this limited time that we had we didn’t see any strong patterns but we think that if we had more time we had more time we would surely see some type of stronger growth pattern.
We did observe that the plant that was planted in the bottle grew higher and faster than the plant that got transferred into the bottle.
Do you believe that your data shows accuracy and precision? Yes, our data is accurate because we used rulers to measure the height of the plants. Another thing we did is that we kept the conditions in the bottle the same, so neither bottle had experienced changes in the conditions. However, the plants that we used to compare life and birth in a bottle vs. transplant to a bottle were different plants, and some of the things we noticed may have been cause by the differences between the two species, and not environmental conditions.


VI.  Conclusion
We compared beans that grew from the beginning in a closed environment to a gardenia plant which we transferred from the middle school garden (open environment) to a closed environment. We realized that the beans grew better than the Gardenia plant. We believe that this is so because the gardenia wasn’t used to a closed environment, while the beans were used to living in a closed environment.

VII.Further Inquiry:    
Our main failure in this experiment was having different plants for each part of the experiment, which almost certainly lead to results that we probably wouldn’t have gotten if the plants were the same. If I were to redo this lab, that would be the #1 thing I would change. I might also make the time and frequency of checking the plant and the length of the observational period longer/more frequent. Otherwise, I think it was a very good lab.

                                                         Waste management issue

Waste management is becoming a bigger and bigger problem on a global scale. The worst thing about the waste management issue is that it is affecting almost all living things on our planet, from us Humans to small fishes in the ocean.  Waste Management is the way we dispose and manage our waste not only inorganic (plastic and other items that are non natural and are hard to decompose) but organic waste too.  The exact definition would be; Waste management is the collection, transport, processing, recycling or disposal and monitoring of waste materials.

Waste management was always a problem, maybe not as serious as it is today but it was always there. In all stages of evolution humans needed to find a way to dispose of their waste no matter how all humans disposed of their waste in some way.  In the early eighteenth century carters in France and In the United Kingdom were paid by households to go out of town and dump the trash.  The first municipal cleaning program was established by Benjamin Franklin and it was in Philadelphia in the year 1757.  In that time people would dispose of all their trash in a pit. From 1757 much has changed new materials that are not biodegradable so there would be no point of dumping them in a pit that would pollute the soil. Unfortunately some people are doing this and are going by unpunished.

The regions affected the waste management issue are vast, we could even say that the entire planet is affect even though some regions may have more problems than others. This means that not only Serbia is facing this problem other regions of world especially countries that haven’t yet developed a recycling program or are enforcing waste burning and other bad ways of disposing of waste. I strongly believe that the population that is affected the most is humans even though we are the ones producing all of the waste.  Otherwise all of the species are affected because if we dispose of our waste in the oceans the ocean animals are endangered, if we burn the waste the birds will suffer from pollution on the air and if we dispose of waste in a bad way all of the land animals will be affected.

Some of the ways we can prevent further waste management issues are by starting to recycle on a neighborhood level than on a city level and then as a country lastly as a global community.  There are governmental organizations that are trying to prevent factories from producing waste without it being necessary this means that they shouldn’t use square meter of plastic in order to make a small 10 centimeter action figure.  Along this line come the health hazards the largest health hazard would be improper disposal of toxic materials which may affect the fish in the ocean which we later on eat, or the water we drink. This is very dangerous because of the fresh water shortages we must not pollute this little water that we have.  Another hazard from improper waste management would be air pollution when burning waste all of the hazardous gasses escape into the air causing air pollution which may cause lung damage to both people and animals.

The people that cause the waste management problem do not dispose of their trash properly, some ways that waste is disposed in an improper way are, burning the waste and dumping non biodegradable materials onto landfills.  There are numerous agencies that are willing to help you dispose of your trash in a proper way in order for us to have a clean Earth, some of them are the Environment Agency stationed in the U.K (to see their work go to this link http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/business/topics/waste/default.aspx) another agency would be EPA or the environmental protection agency they are a world known agency ( here is a link to their web site http://www.epa.ie/downloads/advice/waste/waste/).  If you contact any of these agencies they will give you advice and offer you help in proper waste disposal, Serbia does not currently have any organizations that support this program even though we have a recycling plant.

In conclusion I believe that improper waste management is becoming bigger and bigger problem, countries which cannot afford a proper recycling program tend to burn the litter and waste. This pollutes the air that we breathe, that is why I think that environmental organizations should encourage the larger more powerful countries to donate money in order for the poorer countries to have a recycling program. I also think that everyone can help by encouraging their parents to try and recycle their materials and to throw away only what is necessary if you have a old T.V give it to the poor don’t through it away because most T.V’s aren’t recyclable. It is the little things we do in life that can make a huge impact.

Bibliography

Bassis, Luke. "Waste Disposal." University of Michigan. Web. 22 Oct. 2010. .

"Waste Management." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. 22 Oct. 2010. .

"Urban Waste Management Issues." GDRC | The Global Development Research Center. Web. 22 Oct. 2010. .

  

Reflection on The World in A bottle lab

                                     Reflection on the world in a bottle lab

   For the world in a bottle lab I worked with Adrian.  Of all labs I had completed so far this was probably the hardest and most fun lab yet. Some key components that I believe we had completed well were the data chart which really allowed us to collaborate and share all of our data. I also liked the analysis of the data which really showed how much effort both Adrian and I had put into this project, we had detailed but straight forward information which described how our project went along.  I must say that both of us worked equally on the project, especially because we had worked on Google docs and both of us had just chosen a part to work on and we would help each other by editing each other’s work.

                                    Reflection on the one world essay

The one world essay is probably the best piece of work I have ever written for science. I believe that it has all of the required components put into an essay.  I also used advanced vocabulary and proper scientific terms.  My essay wasn’t necessarily the most serious essay in the class meaning that I had some connections and comments which made my essay just a little bit more personal. Another thing that I really liked was the way that I incorporated all of the elements and added a couple of extra details like as short history or some facts or statistics.