Purpose: To assure the products are safe for the
environment, manufactures evaluate the impacts of product ingredients in
wastewater treatment system, streams, river, lakes and estuaries. I want to
observe what three cleaning products do to plant growth.
Hypothesis: Car wash will make the plant die.
Persil will make the plant brown. Palmolive will make the plant grow. Water will
make the plant just perfect.
Materials: Tray, tags, permanent marker, ruler,
measuring cup, identical plants, teaspoon, straws, pots,detergents,4 different
ones, (one with phosphate, no phosphate, water and any other one)
Method:
1. Purchase four identical plants
2. Mixed four solutions: Plant one with ½ cup of water only, Plant two with a
teaspoon of Simoniz car wash and ½ a cup of water, Plant three with a teaspoon
of Palmolive and ½ a cup of water, Plant four with a teaspoon of Persil (
laundry detergent) and ½ a cup of water.
3. Water plants every four days
4. Record growth of plant , color and the feel of the soil every four days
Observations: See Charts
Day 4
Day 8
Day 12
Day 15
Possible sources of Error
• Bought the plants already grown so
I don’t know if they were all equally healthy. I could have started from
planting the seed.
• I don't know if all the soil nutrients were the same.
• I could have done the experiment for longer then 2 weeks to see if the plants
would live or effectively die.
Conclusion: Plant One with water lived and grew a
little bit. Plant Two with water and carwash grew a tiny bit and turned dark
green because of the nutrients in the product. Plant Three and Four were almost
about to die because the products contained chemicals that were not friendly to
the environment. I was correct about about plant one and four, and what happened
to two and three I did not expect.
At the Start of the Experiment At the end of the Experiment