Casie UR-The Final Count Down!

Michelle, Section 201: Will you be measuring the plant growth to determine if copper has any effect on their growth rates? Do you hypothesize that it will help or hinder them?

(left) Copper in the water hyacinths (right) Copper in the controls 

Thank you Michelle for the question. I am unfortunately not measuring the growth of the plant in regards to copper input. I did notice, however, that the plants did not decrease in size over the week I did my experiment.  From the research that I  have done so far there is no evidence that copper will hinder the growth of the plant. If you would like to know more about growth rates and climate change check out Garth's blog Putting the data to the test. 

Wow, this experiment  has taken many turns, the latest is that I made a HUGE error. The plant food that I was giving my plants contained.....COPPER! Yes. I know. How will I ever find out if these plants suck up copper when my controls have been compromised? Well, thanks to Dr. Woodall and her husband I will be taking the average and the standard deviation of my 3 controls and creating a bar graph to show my data. I will have the final data available next Friday.

When copper is present the vials (to the left) will turn purple If not it is colorless. Both vials turned purple to indicate that there is copper present, but my controls had a considerable amount more then the ones that held the Water Hyacinths. Prospects look good! I can't wait to share my final results. :) 

Filtering my samples