Recently, in 3V we have been looking at the secret life of plants. We have been learning all about how plants stay alive, including looking at the way in which they adapt to different surroundings. We learnt how plants growing in desert conditions conserve water, and how plants growing under the dark rainforest canopy manage to maximise their exposure to light.
This week, we have been looking at the inside of plants, and how they transport nutrients and water from their roots to their leaves. We have been practising our scientific thinking skills in order to design an experiment to try to prove that water travels up the stems of plants.
To do this, we carefully measured out plain water and dyed it blue with food colouring, before adding a stick of celery to the water. In order to keep the experiment fair, we also put a stick of celery in the same amount of plain water to see whether the results were different. This is called the 'control.'
Normally, Mrs Vaqueiro would leave the experiment overnight and then have the class look at the results 24 hours later, but this year we didn't have to be so patient! The celery drew up the blue water almost before our very eyes, and by the time we had finished writing up our experiment and drawing a diagram, the leaves at the top of the celery stalks had started to turn blue! We are excited to see whether they turn an even darker blue overnight.
