Peppers Lab

Guiding Question: What are the variations between peppers and how do variations affect the pepper?

Hypothesis: I believe that the number of seeds affects the size of the pepper and variations that occur.

Variables:

Controlled Population: The peppers are the controlled population in this experiment

Exploration:

Materials:

4 or more peppers

Rulers

Notebook/paper

Procedure:

1.      Take 4-5 peppers that are different

2.      Measure them and record their size in circumference and length (cm)

3.      Observe them and record their shape

4.      Open the peppers and then count the number of seeds each of the peppers has

Tables:

Size

Pepper	circumference	Length
1	25.5cm	13cm
2	23cm	10.5cm
3	19.5cm	12.5cm
4	24 cm	5.5cm
5	23 cm	11.5cm

Weight

Peppers	Weight
1	155 grams
2	115 g
3	105 g
4	92 g
5	127.5 g

Number of seeds

Peppers	Number of seeds
1	103 seeds
2	50 seeds
3	0 seeds/ infertile wrinkled
4	16 seeds
5	34 seeds

Graph:

Record and Analyze (observations):

Pepper 1: is the biggest of the 5 peppers in size, mass and shape.

Pepper 2: is quite big and has a long-like shape.

Pepper 3: is the second longest in length but it’s quite thin, it was also wrinkled and infertile.

Pepper 4: was small and round like a ball tomato, it had brown fungus-like stuff in side.

Pepper 5: was third largest in length and also had brown fungus-like inside.

Analysis of Data:

The patterns that occur among these peppers is that in general when a pepper is bigger and has a higher mass it has more seeds, if the differences among the masses of the peppers are small then there could be a different outcome. I think this data shows accuracy but there could have been but one of the peppers was infertile and that affected the lab and investigation otherwise I believe the data was valid

Conclusion:

The goal was to find the variations and each pepper has many different variations no one pepper is the same. While conducting this lab I found many variations among the peppers some in circumference, length, mass and the numbers of seeds they have. But these small variations do not affect the pepper that much, the biggest variation is the number of seeds and mass of the pepper, we found out that if the mass is greater in average there are more seeds. My hypothesis was that the mass affects the seeds and that’s what happens. I learned that in average the mass affects the seeds each pepper has, meaning that if the pepper is larger it has more seeds, which means there’s a bigger chance of the pepper creating other peppers through its seeds.

Further Inquiry:

I think this data I got was valid since I measured the data specifically for each peppers and used 5 peppers which gave a wider variety of information I could use, also the infertile pepper affects the outcome of the lab. This lab could have been improved if there were even more peppers we were using to test because then you could get a clearer picture than with the information we used, the results were affected by the peppers we got. If think of a new lab similar to this one the hypothesis would be “How does the mass affect the number of seeds in a pepper in a large population?”