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Investigate how environmental conditions affect plant growth.
Choose sunlight, water, and soil pH. Grow a sunflower for 10 weeks, follow its changing appearance, and use the height data to compare controlled experiments.
Your investigation
Choose conditions and decide which factor you will test.
Grow the plant week by week and record its height.
Compare experiments and support a conclusion with evidence.
Choose the growing conditions. To make a fair comparison later, change only one condition between experiments.
Conditions are locked during a growth trial. Select Reset Experiment to choose new conditions.
Advance one week at a time. Watch the plant and use the chart and table to follow changes in height.
Set your conditions and grow to see how the sunflower responds.
The data table provides the exact value for every plotted point.
Conditions: set them and grow
| Week | Height (cm) |
|---|---|
| Select “Grow One Week” to start. | |
Complete at least two experiments, compare the results, and build a Claim, Evidence, Reasoning explanation.
Grow a sunflower for all 10 weeks, then press Reset and grow another with different conditions. Each finished experiment is saved here so you can compare them.
| Experiment | Sunlight | Water | Soil pH | Weeks | Final height |
|---|
Your saved experiments will appear here.
Write one clear sentence that answers the question.
Sentence starter
Use numbers from your experiments above. Include at least two examples.
Sentence starter
Explain why this happens, using science ideas about how plants grow.
Sentence starter
Your writing is not saved if you close this page. Copy it, or select Download Results Image to save the current experiment and your response.
This simulation simplifies sunflower growth for learning and data collection. Real sunflowers are also affected by genetics, temperature, soil nutrients, and other environmental conditions.
Use the lab to test how one environmental condition affects sunflower growth.
A sunflower's growth depends on its environment. This lab models three big factors:
Real plants don't grow at a steady rate. Sunflowers start slow as seedlings, shoot up quickly in the middle of the season, then slow down as they put energy into flowering. Watch for that S-shaped curve on the chart!
Keep water and pH the same, and grow once with low sunlight and once with high sunlight. Compare the two height charts. Which conditions grew the tallest sunflower? That's the scientific method in action.