Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

My daughter is interested in doing a science fair project that looks at the effect of nitrogen. There is one project we are interested in doing, but we want to modify it some. First, she wants to do a flowering plant and not just a basic plant. This means we need a plant that grows from a seed and gets to the flowering stage quickly. Any suggestions? I tried to find this information and could only find days to germination.

Also, I recall (in my MS years) doing a similar project. I recall baking the soil to destroy the organic material in the soil which basically removed the nitrogen from the soil. Is that correct? Am I remembering that correctly? How do you remove the nitrogen from the soil?

Thanks for your help!

Hi jmillikan,

First I must say that this topic is outside of my expertise. You may get better answers to your questions on the Life, Earth and Social Sciences forum.

That said, a quick online search on “fast blooming flowers” turned up several suggestions including marigolds, phlox and sunflower. Apparently “fast blooming” equates to about 70 days. More information is available here:

https://homeguides.sfgate.com/fastest-g ... 47873.html

Soil can be sterilized by baking it at about 200 deg. F. But I don't think this procedure will remove any appreciable amounts of nitrogen. It may be easier to use a growing medium with low nitrogen content than to try removing nitrogen from soil.

By the way, Science Buddies has a project on the effect of nitrogen fertilizer on plant growth that may be of interest to you:

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

I hope this helps. Please ask again if you have more questions.

A. Norman