New Year, New Blog!

The Tomatosphere Experiment begins again with a new class of scientists! Due to some difficulties accessing this blog at school, we have moved to a new URL. Go to our classroom website to view our 2015 experiment.

http://schools.ccrsb.ednet.ns.ca/ud/wilbur/blog/index.html

Planting Day

The tomato seedlings finally made it into the garden. Although very hot and humid, the skies were overcast. All the plants seems to be doing well.

The Results Are In

When we got to school Mr. Peveril and Mrs. Walker came in our classroom and they passed out certificates. We all got one.

Grade 3 Wilbur & O'Donnell getting picture with certificate

Now we know which seeds were in space. The "T" seeds were the control group and the "V" seeds were in space at the International Space Station.

Taking Home the Seedlings

Day 35

Today we took home our seedlings.

Our Seedlings!

Day 27

''V'' seed did not germinate.

Today there was no change and its the last day of the tomatosphere experiment. We are going to wait some more to see if the 2 sprouts  will germinate. Then Miss Wilbur will put in the results.

''T''seed did not germinate.

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Time Lapse Video

Watch a time lapse video of our seeds germinating.

Day 26

Today the "T" have 0 germinated and 1 sprouted so no change. 

This T seedling has 4 leaves.

Today in the "V" seeds 0 have germinated and 1 sprouted so no change on both of the seeds.

Day 25

Today one T seed germinated and one T seed sprouted. But they needed water.

T'' seeds

 Zero V has germinated but one has sprouted. And we went to other classrooms to share our project.

V'' seeds

Day 22

Today the T seed coats are holding the cotyledons together. Some need water and two sprouted.The V seeds have only one seed coat stuck.

The seed coat is stuck.

We made a voting chart of which seeds we think have been in space. Twelve have been voted T and ten have been voted for V.

Our Graph

 

Day 21

Today 0 germinated and 2 spouted.The "T" seeds had lots of light so we had to switch them and some need water. Some of the germinated seeds grew more leaves.

The "T" seed grow 4 leaves.

The "v"seed grow 3 leaves.

For the "V"seeds 1 germinated and 1 sprouted, and some need water. Some of the seeds grew more leaves.

Day 20

Today zero "T" seeds germinated but two sprouted. We think that the different spot is more cold. 

Our Chart

Today for the "V" seeds one more germinated, and two sprouted. To record our data we made a chart to keep us on track.    

In the News

Our experiment is in the news! Check out this article in the Chronicle Herald newspaper.

Day 19

Today no "T" seeds germinated but three seeds sprouted!

Also today no "V" seeds germinated and three sprouted.

One of our "T" seeds sprouted!!

Day 18

We didn't collect data on the weekend. 22 have germinated all together and two sprouted for the "T" group. 

16 germinated altogether in the "V" group and three sprouted.    

This is some of the plants.

This is all of the plants.

Day 15

Today one more "T" seed germinated and three "T" seeds sprouted. There are only two that have not done anything. All together we have 21 "T" seeds that have germinated. 

Two seeds have not done anything.

 Today two "V" seeds have germinated and four sprouted. Altogether 16 "V" seeds have germinated. 

Today's Special Person types the blog.

Day 14

Three more "T" seeds have germinated and three more have sprouted. They all needed water. One more "T" seed has sprouted in the afternoon.  

This "T" seed germinated in the afternoon.

Three more "V" seeds have germinated and six have sprouted. "V" needed water too.

Day 13

Two more "T" seeds have germinated. Now 17 "T" seeds have germinated altogether. We are still waiting for ten "T" seeds to germinate. Five more "T" seeds have sprouted.

Seed coat on cotyledons.

Five more "V" seeds have germinated. Six more "V" seeds have sprouted. Some needed water. Some of the sprouted seeds still have the seed coat on it.

Day 12

We checked the seeds this morning and all together fifteen of the "T" seeds germinated. Some of the seeds needed water.

These are our "T" seeds that germinated.

We also checked the ''V' seeds this morning and 7 all together have germinated. Four germinated over the weekend. Eight have sprouted in the " V". We think "V" are the ones that went to space because less of them have germinated or sprouted.

In our other experiment one seed has germinated.

This is our other experiment.

 

The camera takes a picture every half hour.

Day 11

More seeds have germinated. Four "T" seeds have germinated and eight have sprouted. One "V" seed has germinated and eight have sprouted.

Day 10

More seeds have germinated! Seven "T" seeds and one "V" seed have germinated. We now have a total of nine "T" seeds and two "V" seeds germinated. 
Eight "T" seeds and six "V" seeds have sprouted but not yet germinated.

Day 9

Two "T" seeds and one "V" seed have germinated. Yahoo!

Day 8

None have germinated but two "T" seeds have sprouted. We think the water and new location helped them sprout.

Sprouted!

After lunch we noticed that one of the sprouts had germinated. But we can't count it in today's data because we always collect our data at 9:00 am.

Germinated!

Day 7

We are still waiting for our seeds to germinate. Our peat pellets were very dry so we had to give them lots of water. We also checked our research and learned that our germination station was not in a good location. We moved it away from the window and to a warmer part of the room.

We watered our seeds.

The seeds in Miss O'Donnell's class have started to germinate! Six seeds in total have germinated.

Germination!

Recording data.

Day 6

At 9:15am we looked at the peat pellets to see if there was any germination. None have germinated but some needed water.

Checking for germination.

Day 5

No change. We keep looking but our seeds have not germinated yet. We record this data in our science folders.

Data sheet from a science folder.

Day 4

No change. We're still waiting for germination to take place. We watered the peat pellets today to keep the seeds moist.

Planting Day! (Day 0)

We planted our seeds today!

We used the Scientific Method to plan our experiment. Click here to view Student #1's work.

First we had to soak the peat pellets. We had to wait 20 minutes for them to soak up all the water.

Soaking the peat pellets.

 Watch a time-lapse of a peat pellet absorbing water.

Then we counted the seeds. There were 31 seeds in the "T" package and 21 seeds in the "V" package. The seeds were packed by weight so we are wondering if space travel affected the weight of the seeds.
 
Next we carefully planted 27 "T" seeds. We kept 4 seeds for another experiment. The seeds were very tiny and we had to be careful not to lose them. We used toothpicks to help cover the seeds with the peat.

Planting our tiny seeds.

After we planted the "T" seeds, we placed the peat pellets and their seeds in a tray at the germination station. Then we planted all the "V" seeds. Everything is labelled so we don't get the seeds mixed up!

Our Germination Station

Now we just have to wait for germination to happen!

Finishing Our Research

Groups are working hard to finish their research. We're almost ready to write our reports!

We used the Netbooks and Laptops to search the web for information.

Our Quest Begins!

We started our Tomatosphere Webquest today! We are using the internet (web) to search for (quest) the answers to three important questions:

1. What is Tomatosphere?
2. What is the experiment and how will it be done?
3. Why are scientists doing this experiment?

When we finish our webquest, each group will publish a report of what they learned.

Working hard on our Tomatosphere research!

Working together to check our information.