Botany Questions for Science fair project

[Uynama]

I am doing some research on my Question for science fair. It is "How does color affect plant growth". I have a few questions.
My first question is "If I am growing my plants indoors, what would be a good way to get colored light?"
My second question is " If I am growing two types of plants, in red,green, blue, and black light, what would be my control?"
Thank you very much.

[sunmoonstars]

Hi Uynama,

That's a great project! the easiest way to get colored light is to use a white light and filter it. I think this link would give enough information to get you started. it mentions the controls, too - you would use each plant type grown under normal white light as the control for each experiment.

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... ml#summary

Have fun! And let me know if you have more questions.

Tonya

[sarahlaugtug]

Hello Uynama,
Tonya has some good ideas to get you started. I also wanted to give you some resources on what a "control" is, how you decide what your control it, and how to determine your independent variable. In order to do a "fair test" you will measure one variable (the thing you change); in your experiment, you will be changing the color of the light. Your dependent variable will be what you observe based on your independent variable (such as the change in the height, or whatever you are testing). You compare your test subjects to (the height, if that is your dependent variable) the control.
Please read these articles for more information:
https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... test.shtml
https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... bles.shtml

Determine your independent variable, dependent variable, and your control. The control is that you keep everything constant. For instance, you will have a plant in which you keep it at no filtered light. If you are using a UV lamp, your control will be the UV lamp alone, with no colored filters added. That way when you analyze your experiment, you have something to compare it to. Remember that if your variable is colored filters, you need to keep everything else constant: all plants will need the exact same amount of water, soil, and be the same "age." Hope that helps.
Let us know if you have further questions, figuring out the independent and dependent variable can sometimes be tricky. Sounds like a great project!