The Cheap Vegetable Gardener

Science Fair – Will smaller seeds sprout faster?

14.5 years ago kids, science fair

This site was practically started because of my oldest daughters science fair project Why Don’t Strawberries Grow in the Wintertime?  Now with my youngest in kindergarten she was very excited to have a science fair project of her own, which should be pretty obvious from the picture above.

With no influence from me she decided on answering the question if smaller seeds will sprout faster.  These days science fairs are more than just gluing some some Styrofoam balls to a couple hangers and calling it good.  They require using true scientific methods and procedures, which is pretty advanced for a 5 year old, although she didn’t seem to notice.  Here is the contents of her experiment…

Hypothesis: Smaller seeds will grow bigger in a shorter amount of time because their roots don’t need to grow as big to support the plant

Procedure: I planted 3 seeds of each plant type (lettuce, cilantro, pumpkin) and watered them and gave them sunlight and I watched them grow.

Results: I planted the seeds at the same time and measured the growth over 2 weeks.  The lettuce was the first one to sprout.  The cilantro was the next one to sprout and the pumpkin was the last one to sprout.  At week one, the lettuce was still the largest, cilantro was the second, and the pumpkin was the smallest

Conclusion: Smaller seeds sprouted and grow quicker than larger seeds.

I was very impressed with her project as well as the hypothesis, one of those moments of thinking, “hmm…is that how actually works…”  Though you probably can think of a few plants that would break the hypothesis but pretty much on target for most plants.

Tags: cheap, cilantro