Welcome to the Franklin Elementary School Web Page for Ms.
Benson's class! We have been working on an ecology project with
our scientists, Carol Thornber and Risa Goldstein. These are our
scientists, Carol and Risa, in our classroom. The students and
Risa, Carol and Ms. Benson decided to do an experiment looking
at how different pollutants affect the growth of plants. We
hypothesized that plants given water would grow better than
those given solutions with various "pollutants", but of course
we didn't know how plants would react to different pollutants.
We picked common substances for our pollutants. We chose to use
lima bean seeds, since they are large and grow quickly. We
planted seeds in potting soil. We gave the seeds either: water
(control), sunscreen solution (sunscreen + water), soap solution
(liquid soap + water), or shampoo solution (shampoo + water).
Here we are setting up our experiment Seeds were "watered" as
necessary to keep the soil moist. There were 18 seeds/treatment.
We measured plant size a