Hollin Meadows requested seeds from mission STS-118
(The mission that included teacher, Barbara Morgan) and received them in late January.

Fifth and Sixth grade classes designed experiments that examine the differences in the seeds from the mission and the control seeds, which were not flown on the mission.

Students wrote eight experiments using questions on topics such as: lifespan of the plants, volume of the seeds, germination rate, root depth, leaf and stem density, and a study of the second generation seeds that eventually come from these plants.

We found some interestung differences in many of the experiements that we conducted. In two complete plantings, we immediately saw that the space exposed seeds germinated first, and seem to be heartier. Fifth and sixth graders exhibited their results at Science and Math night. Click the image to the left to see some of their exciting results.

First through fourth graders have begun planting a second round of seeds and are making more observations and collecting more data. First graders planted seeds in our earth boxes and saw that the space seedss grew taller and faster than the Earth based seeds. We also used a special "root view" planter to bserve root depths and sizes. Our roots averaged about the same over the life os the plants in both experiments, but we saw big differences during the germination and sprouting phases.

NASA's Education Web site will be featuring our experiments in an upcoming feature article. Great work Hollin Meadows!