Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Let the music play!

Does music have an effect on plant growth?
So I have looked at a few websites as to the information about my research project, and I’ve found out that:
  • Plants respond to stimuli, that is, they react to something that causes reactions
  • Plants do not respond differently depending on what type of music or artist (e.g. they would not grow faster when listening to Taylor Swift rather than Linkin Park)
  • The relationship between plants and music have something to do with mechanical waves, which are waves that require a medium to travel through (i.e. sound)
  • Therefore plants do not grow faster when music is played because they hear it, but because of vibrations of sound waves
  • Music can affect plants positively or negatively

    Sources
    http://www.helium.com/items/989723-how-music-can-help-plant-growth
    http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1126916/does_music_affect_plant_growth.html

    So my experiment will be something like this:
    I will grow 3-5 plants normally for a week. The differences with regards to their appearance and height will be recorded. I might repeat these steps for another week to conduct a fair test.
    The following week I will buy the same number and type of plants and grow them. This time, however, the plants will have the music played for them for 2 hours every day for a week (the same song should be played for the entire experiment). The appearance and the growth of the plants will be recorded.
    The process above will be repeated the following week.
    This is just a general idea of how my experimentation would be. I hope it is going to be a great and fun experiment!

    Oh yeah, there are variables that should be considered:

    Independent variables:
  • number of plants
  • type and size of plants
  • period of time the plants will grow

Dependent variables (during experiment):

  • growth of plants
  • appearance of the plants

There should be some more, but so far I can only think of these.

Don't worry, I will think of some more. Eventually.

1 comment:

  1. A few issues I have with the way your method is at the moment- you are planning to grow these plants at different times- do you think the weather might have an effect on the actual growth itself?

    Think a little about how you are planning to do this prac to make it a fair test!

    Decided on which plant to use yet?

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