Chemical Fertilizers Science Fair Projects with Radishes

Botany Science Fair Projects

Fertilizer experiments can be very interesting for those students interested in botany. These experiments will look at how fertilizers impact the growth pattern of specific plants. When conducting fertilizer experiments you will want to look at the chemical makeup of the fertilizer to figure out what compound the plant is actually responding to.

PURPOSE

The purpose of this experiment was to determine the effect of different fertilizers on radish-growth.

I became interested in this idea when I noticed that my mom buys only one kind of fertilizer and I wondered if it worked better than other fertilizers.

The information gained from this experiment will benefit home gardeners and crop growers raise bigger and better plants.

HYPOTHESIS

My hypothesis was that plants would grow more massive with a fertilizer with higher percentage number of nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus in it.

I based my hypothesis on an article that I read from Encarta Encyclopedia that stated, "The three elements that most commonly must be supplied in fertilizers are nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium."

EXPERIMENT DESIGN

The constants in this study were:

• The type of plant used (radishes)
• The amount of water given to each plant every day (10 ml)
• The type of water given to the plants (tap water)
• The temperature plants were grown at (20-º C)
• The amount of potting soil given to each plant
• The amount of time to grow (7 weeks)
• The way the plants mass was measured (triple-beam balance)

The manipulated variable was the type of fertilizer used to grow the radishes.

The responding variable was the amount of plant-growth after a period of 7 weeks.

To measure the responding variable I used a triple-beam balance to measure the mass of the plants.

MATERIALS

This abstract is continued here... fertilizer radish growth science fair projects.