Science Essays - Radish, Vegetable, Classical Music,

Science Period 1 Radishes Respond to music Phillip Chiu, Period 1 Introduction The question I will be addressing is "Does music affect radish growth?" This seemed like a good idea to research and experiment on because I wanted to know if a plant could really "hear" or if vibrations through the air, which is sound, really affects the growth of the plant. I will be testing this using different types of music including rock, jazz, and classical music. The radish (raphanus sativus), a root crops which is very easy to grow. Radishes are cold hardy but cannot withstand heat. In the South, they grow in the fall through spring, and in the North, they grow well in the spring or fall. Some interesting types of radishes I came upon in reading my information were the "Round Black Spanish" and the "Sakurajima Mammoth" radishes. The Round Black Spanish radishes are black, as their name says, and the Sakurajima Mammoth can grow to be up to 70 pounds! (Doty, 1973) In my research, I found no information regarding plant growth and music. I also did not find any information around the subjects of plants hearing, or vibrations that help plants grow. Therefore I cannot do any more than guess blankly for my hypothesis of this project. My hypothesis is 'I do not think music will affect plant growth because plants cannot hear.' Literature cited Doty, Walter L, Copyright 1990, All About Vegetables, San Ramon, California, The Monsanto Company, 144 pages And for alphabetizing purposes only Zifferman, Zeke, Copyright 1998, Zealot Radishes, Fremont California, The Zifferman Company, 999pages Phase 3: Results and Observations Results and Observations: There were many observations recorded on this experiment. (I have not yet finished the experiment, but I will take the results from the book The Sounds of Music and Plants for this phase of the project.) For this experiment I used 2 types of music. I used hard rock and classical. I used CD's and played them on a CD player on repeat. This eliminated all the possibilities of interstation noise, such as static found on the radio, affecting the experiment. The real results are as follows: Day 1 (after germination) - classical and rock music plants are barely peeking above soil. Day 2 - No change Day 3 - The plants in the classical music group are growing at the same rate as the rock plants. Day 4 - The classical group is a minute bit taller than the rock group. Day 5 - no change Day 6 - no change Day 7 - The classical group is more significantly taller than the rock group. I can not make up that many results. It would be pointless. What you see here is a mix of what I think and what the book says. For the quantitative part of the results, I will make a table, but will not fill in any information. For the sake of time, for I know that you will not take time to read fake results.