Title: Angiosperm Resistance to Toxicity of Nicotine and Petroleum [by JESK]
Authors: Emma Brasseur, Shane Hall, Jessica Roth, & Karina Yu
Description: In this research project, we will be testing plants’ resistance to different toxic substances. We will be using the angiosperm Petunia, and testing it with Nicotine and Petroleum. We thought that this could be a very useful experiment to observe the effects of when chemicals get into soil and absorbed by the plants roots, as well as hypothesize how it could then affect the environment. We chose to test the plant with nicotine to see the possible effect of a smoking environment on a plant, and we chose petroleum because we want to see how plants could cope with oil spills. The significance of this is to understand how plants react to unnatural disasters.
Details of what we have done so far: Unfortunately, our liquid nicotine has yet to arrive and may never arrive, so we have not added any toxins to our fifteen Petunias at this time. Most likely, we will have to create a cigarette tea instead of using liquid nicotine to start our project. We have set up our project by labeling the plants based on the toxins that will be added, the dilution factor of either 5% or 0.5%, and numbering them 1-3. We labeled the plants 1-3 to ensure that our measurements of their leaves and shoots do not get mixed up. We also color coded the labels for each dilution so no plant was given the wrong mixture. For example, the control is blue. We have also taken photographs of the roots of each plant to see if the toxins will affect their health by the end of the experiment.
Figure 1: Pictures of Our Lovely Petunias as We Set Them Up.
Figure 2: The roots of one of our Petunias
Figure 3: A line up of each group of Petunias
Wow what an interesting idea! It never crossed my mind that the presence of nicotine and petroleum could potentially affect the growth of the plant. I can't wait to see the results from your experiment so we can keep our plants away from these kinds of environments so that they would be able to grow better.
ReplyDeleteHey guys,
ReplyDeleteSuch a cool and interesting idea, especially after seeing you guys' poster at the student showcase last time. I really liked your guys' idea for this, as it was really interesting, and is posing a real problem in the wild nowadays. We learned about nutrients and how their deficiency could affect plants, but this experiment tested how foreign and harmful things could also get absorbed and have possibly negative effects on the plant, which was so interesting! Your results were really shocking and surprising, considering how big the impact of nicotine and petroleum were to these plants. Awesome project, guys!
Hi guys! Great idea for a project. I think this was a smart idea because not only it is it something we don't always think about, but it is something we can all obviously relate to. There is a great tie in between how the nutrients in the plants are affected and how it affects our every day lives as well. It is a great way to draw people in and show them how they are affecting the enviroment around them. This the kind of project that shows us how we can all help out. I would love to see this on a larger scale like the ecology project Gwen showed us with pesticides. Great thinking, JESK!
ReplyDeleteHey, awesome idea! There are a lot of pollutants and runoff these days. Ranging from oil spills on small and large scales, to antifreeze and nitrates. It'll be interesting what kind of affect each would have on the flowers. Interesting how you guys went with nicotine because I've never thought of that as a pollutant but now that I think of it, a lot of people discard cigarettes while driving and then they get washed away, could be into plant areas. I would've tested car fluids like engine oil, antifreeze, power steering fluid, brake fluid, brake cleaner. . . and see what kind of affect that would have on flowers.
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