Blog 3: Nature Walk Hypotheses & Experiment

I should've seen it coming that after our lovely nature walk the other day we would be designing an experiment in the classroom to follow it up! There were a lot of fascinating parts of the temperate deciduous forest biome that we could've studied; however, one thing that sparked my particular interest on the nature walk was the milkweed. For starters, I had no idea that the sap contained latex! No wonder it is so sticky! I've also thought that the sap cures bug bites and minor cuts. Anyways, my group and I decided to carry out an experiment that has to do with how much sap comes out of a milkweed leaf. If it's a bigger leaf, does that mean that it has more sap to release? Or if it's a smaller leaf, will it have equal, less than, or more sap that a larger leaf? My hypothesis is that a bigger milkweed leaf will have more sap in it that will flow out than a smaller milkweed leaf. We also have to have a variable in our experiment, and we chose water. What we plan to do is try to keep the milkweed alive in the classroom (yes, take a shovel and a pot outside to dig up the plant and bring it back into the classroom) and water one milkweed plant more frequently than the other (we will water it enough for it to stay alive). Now if the milkweed doesn't live in the classroom, we'll have to alter our experiment design. We will cross that bridge when/if we get there! Bringing water into the experiment, I hypothesize that the water will not affect how much sap comes out of the milkweed leaves. Therefore, I think that the sap that comes out of a milkweed leaf will be the same amount as the same size of the milkweed leaf that has been frequently watered. We plan on testing how much sap comes out of each leaf by first measuring the length of it then holding it vertical for 10-15 seconds in a beaker and recording how much sap there is. In this experiment, we do have a biotic and an abiotic factor. The milkweed is the biotic factor, and the water is the abiotic factor. More updates to come in the next couple of weeks!