GMU:DIY Biolab “Driver’s License”/Christian Wiegert

From Medien Wiki

Introduction

For my introductory course in the Biolab I decided to focus on plants and especially on growing them under artificial circumstances. I split my experimentations in two parts: 1:Growing plants under very artificial light and 2:Growing plants under very artificial circumstances


Ideas

1:Growing plants under very artificial light

Set up several boxes to grow plants under artificial light. Vary color, duration or other aspects of the light and see, if it changes anything in the growing of plants.

Biolab plants tseh.jpg

Biolab plants tseh1.jpg

2:Growing plants under very artificial circumstances

Grow plants in different substitues for soil, e.g. agar-agar-murishage-skoog-medium and see how they do.

Biolab plants tseh2.jpg

Biolab plants tseh3.jpg

Experiment

1:Growing plants under very artificial light

Day 0

I build and set up a box, seperated in 4 sections. Each section containing one 1 Watt LED to support the inhabitants with light. The boxes have fans, so the air inside will be interchanged from time to time. To control the amount and - for the first experiment - the duration of the light and the fans i wrote a little script that is running on an arduino. this script also counts the time (and in case of a powerdrain stores this information on the eeprom).

For the first part I did not do controlled watering, i just gave them water by hand.

Day 0 box web.jpg

In the two left hand sections, the plants will have a 24h day, with 12h of light. In the other two boxes it will be 12h days with 6h light.

Day0 box back web.jpg

I set up the box in my shared-working-room, which was probably not the best idea, as people there tend to be heating a lot, which results in very dry air.

Day 2

The Plants are already sprouting. No real difference. Neither between colors of light nor between durations

Day2 box1.jpgDay2 box2.jpgDay2 box3.jpgDay2 box4.jpg

Day 5

The plants are growing well. the look a bit leggy, which might be a hint, that the light is not enough. but as i forgot to plant some reference-plants i can't be sure as "gartenkresse" is quite leggy anyway

Day5 box1.jpgDay5 box2.jpgDay5 box3.jpgDay5 box4.jpg

Day 15

The plants are still growing, but they definitely seem weak. i guess it might be due to the fact that they get not enough motion by the fans. probably its also due to the lack of light.

Day15 box1.jpgDay15 box2.jpgDay15 box3.jpgDay15 box4.jpg

The End

Shortly before Christmas I decided to end this experiment, as i knew the university would shut down electricity during the holidays i took the plants out of there boxes and placed them under sunlight. One of them I ate and it tastetd spicey, as suspected. When i came back from holidays i noticed something quite interesting. All plants died during the holidays because they ran out of water. Except for one. It had survived two weeks of not beeing watered, while sitting in a very tiny vessel. When i looked closely i noticed, that the most obvious difference bitween this plant and the others was that the surface of the soil was very smooth and plane. So i think this just had a better sealing effect than the other rough surfaces of the other plants.

2:Growing plants under very artificial circumstances

Day 0

Day0 jelly.jpg

Day0 jelly2.jpg

Day0 num3.jpg

Day0 table.jpg

Day 2

Day2 beginning.jpg

Day2 num1.jpgDay2 num2.jpgDay2 num3.jpg

Day2 num4.jpgDay2 num7.jpg

Day2 numI.jpgDay2 numII.jpgDay2 numIII.jpg

Day2 numVII.jpg

Day2 petrodish.jpg

Day2 roots.jpgDay2 roots2.jpg

Day2 seedsandlight.jpg

Day 5

Day5 num1.jpgDay5 num2.jpgDay5 num3.jpg

Day5 num4.jpgDay5 num7.jpg

Day5 numI.jpgDay5 numII.jpgDay5 numIII.jpg

Day5 numIV.jpgDay5 numVII.jpg

Day 6

The Rise of the mould

Day6 5 V.jpg

Day6 1 2 3.jpgDay6 3 4 7.jpg

Day6 I II III.jpgDay6 III IV VII.jpg

Day 14

Mould seems to be winning

Day14 num5 mould.jpgDay14 num5 plant.jpgDay14 numV.jpg