Just to give a quick overview of the Bio II Honors class, it is a precursor to AP Bio. It comprises multiple tests, quizzes, labs, and projects that are all hands-on. This particular lab, the Mitosis lab, is to test the rate of growth/mitosis of garlic cloves in 3 different substances. One of the substances is 100% water, the second is 50% water/50% new substance and the third is 100% new substance. Depending on the type of substance you used, it could have either increased or decreased the growth rate during a 7-day period.
Personally, I used lemon juice as my new substance. So I set up 3 different garlic cloves in the 3 substances, with 4 toothpicks to hold them up. I put the garlic root about halfway into the substances to make sure I got the same experimental conditions. The reason I used lemon juice was because I knew that lemon juice is much more acidic than water, and I wanted to test if the acidity of a substance affects how the garlic grows. My garlic in the water grew pretty well, but didn’t grow at all in the lemon juice substances. I believe that because of the fact that the other 2 substances were too acidic, it caused nutritional problems because of how corrosive the lemon juice was to the plant. It grew in the water because it had a good amount of pH and also had minerals that sped up the growth process.
Many other students used different substances. My friend, Aidan Mowen, used orange juice to grow his garlic. Everyone used a different substance to make sure that there was no overlap and to really get good results. Some people’s garlic didn’t grow at all, which was a common occurrence in some of the bio classes.
After the 7 day period, we had to write a short lab report about our mitosis lab and how the garlic grew for us. Many graphs and pictures were added personally to mine and many others. Also, there were a lot of errors in the labs. So like I said, some labs didn’t go as planned, and had to be added into the error section of the lab of why the garlic didn’t grow at all. Many things rotted as well, which could have led to why their garlic didn’t grow as well as they expected it to.
This lab was overall pretty successful, even if the garlic didn’t grow. It shows that even when your lab has problems, this helps us understand how growth/mitosis works in a better way.
