Duckweed Thalli Hypothesis

In this study, we found that the growth of the duckweed thalli did not have a significant difference in the NP solution and the creek water solution. Although we found that the duckweed grows faster in the NP solution, rather than the creek water they do indeed have relatively the same mean. Overall our results supports our hypothesis. This also makes us question what kinds of factors are affecting the creek water to kill off the duckweed. Duckweed also is known to stop the growth of algae, but in our experiment we ended up having algae grow in some of the wells filled with creek water. We feel as though the creek water might have had some chemicals in it through runoff that would be harmful to duckweed but beneficial to the algae growing in those wells.

Over the course of six weeks, we saw a lot of changes in the Thalli. We noticed that the growth of thalli in the nitrogen and phosphorus solution was significantly higher than when we started. We also noticed the growth of thalli in the creek water solution was relatively
Then we placed five Thalli in each well so that there would be a controlled start to the experiment. We then placed them in growth chambers every week so that they could have the proper conditions to grow. Every week we counted that thalli in each well, recorded the data, and refilled the wells with the solutions corresponding to the wells being filled. We did this for six weeks with an exception of one week because we didn’t have class. We also made sure that the labels on the tape were consistent with each other in case that would affect the amount of light each well got in the growth chamber. When calculating our results we averaged the difference of the duckweed in each of the wells for the water with the NP solution set from day one to the last day we checked them, and averaged the difference of the creek water from day one to the last day of the experiment as