Nate Clements
Grade 5
Barranca Mesa Elementary School

Most plants need light to live. Plants will grow and even bend to get as much sunlight as possible. My science fair project studied how the strength of light affected how a house plant would bend. I placed an amaryllis at two locations. One location was near a sunny window and the other location was far away from the same window. I measured the amount each plant bent each day as the amaryllis grew. My conclusion is that when the plant was closer to the window it bent more than when the plant was in the middle of the room. When the plant was in the middle of the room it may have been affected by light coming in from the other windows in the room. Charles Darwin in 1880 was the first person to record the results of an experiment where he exposed seedlings to light and watched how the tip of the plant bent toward the light. The reason for the bending of plants toward light is that growth hormones called "auxins" on the non-illuminated side will cause the plant to grow more than on the illuminated side. Since the elongated cells on the non-illuminated side will grow faster than on the other side, the plant will bend. It looks as if the plant is moving toward light to make food, but no plant can seek anything. In my experiment, I should have been more careful that there was only one source of light when the plant was in the middle of the room.