We're finding out what plants need to survive.
We know plants need water, so we conducted an experiment to find out where the water travels. When a plant sucks up the water through its roots, where does it go next?
To conduct the experiment, we used cos lettuce leaves, food colouring, cups, water and small things that will hold the cups down (like coloured beans or marbles)
We put one lettuce leaf in each cup of different coloured water, and we waited a day.
The next day, we noticed that some parts of the lettuce leaves had changed colour! After the roots did its job of sucking up the water, we could see where the water had gone to next, through the leaves to hydrate them! On the left are leaves 'before' the experiment, on the right is 'after' the experiment.
So we know what the roots do, we know what the water is for. Our next objective is to find out why leaves are important and what their job is.