Grow+Beast+Investigation

=A "Tail" of Two Sisters = =Betty and Lucy Grow Beasts = =A Growth Story =

Lucy and Betty, two twin Grow Beasts, were born on June 27, 2013. They are both of independent spirt and pleasant countenance, but have uniquely stubborn personalities. Lucy was born with a length of 4.2 cm, and Betty was born measuring 4.3 cm in length. Other than this slight difference in length, the two sisters are seemingly identical.

Here they are at birth. Lucy and Betty Grow Beast.

Lucy and Betty are similar in almost every way. They both enjoy room temperature water, bathe next to each other for hours at a time, enjoy and experience the same amount of sunlight and artificial light, go to bed and wake up at the same time, have the same number of human visits, and even bathe in the same volume of water. However, Lucy, in her peculiar way, always insists on bathing in purified water. She has purified water delivered every day via special delivery services from the local water company. She is fastidiously clean and worries endlessly about pollutants and their effect on her health and well-being. She prides herself on her special care and consideration for the environment too.

Betty, however, mocks Lucy and her needless worry over pollutants in the water. She enjoys the feel, taste and smell <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000080; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">of water that comes directly from their kitchensink. She has made it well known that she would not waste a single dime <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000080; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">on special purified water. Often Lucy would cry when Betty teased her about her water choice. However, other than <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000080; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">for this small issue, the sisters get along swimmingly.

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000080; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Their mother, a wise woman, let both girls have their way. She recorded their growth over the first days of their lives <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000080; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">until they were full grown. Below is a chart of what she recorded and a graph of the data.

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000080; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">"Why am I so much smaller?" asks Lucy. Her mother has no reply but shows her the growth chart. Lucy examines it carefully. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000080; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">She decides to do some analysis of the data. Here is what she initially finds out. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000080; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">a rate of about 0.2 cm/ hour.
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000080; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Betty was born one tenth of a centimeter longer.
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000080; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">In the first hour, Betty grew three tenths of a centimeter while she only grew two tenths.
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000080; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">In the first two and a half hours though Betty grew seven tenths of a centimeter and I grew only four tenths.
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000080; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">After calculating the rate of growth, she sees Betty grew at fairly constant rate of 0.3 cm/hour and she grew at

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000080; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">"Hmm...so we are both growing at steady rates during the first 2 1/2 hours. Betty is just growing at a slightly faster rate." She continues to look at the data.
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000080; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">She looks at the data for the next 8 hours (2.5 hours elapsed to 10.5 hours elapsed), and notices Betty is now 6.3 cm and she is only 5.9 cm.She laments the fact that Betty is growing faster because now they are 4cm apart in length when before then were only 2cm and at birth only 1cm.
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000080; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">She decides to calculate their rate of growth anyway and finds a surprise. During these 8 hours, their rate of growth was exactly the same! 1.3 cm over the 8 hours! That's a rate of 0.16 cm/hour. That's not that different than her original rate. She feels proud that she was growing steadily. She notes that her sisters growth has slowed down to almost half her original rate.
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000080; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">She continues to calculate growth rates and notices the graph is matching her calculations. Up to 10 hours, the two sisters grew similarly.
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000080; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">She notices a steep up slope in Betty's growth over the next 2 hours. (Elapsed time 10.5 hours through 12.5 hours) Betty grows at a rate of 0.35 cm/hour, her fastest yet. While she only grows at 0.15 cm/hour. She notes she still is growing at a fairly steady rate, between 0.15 and 0.2 cm/hour.
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000080; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Betty's growth over the next 6 hours slows a little compared to the previous growth spurt, and is a rate of 0.25 cm/hour. Lucy notices her growth rate continues to be steady at 0.2 cm/hour.
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000080; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Lucy calculates her growth for the entire first day,(elapsed time of 25.75 hours after birth), as 0.17 cm/ hour. Betty's growth was 0.24 cm/hour. Betty's growth had more fluctuations than her steady even growth. She notes the graph supports this conclusion.

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000080; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Lucy looks back at the graph and pays particular attention to the time between 25 hours and 40 hours after birth. The lines look like they rise at the same rate. They look parallel during this interval. She decides to continue her calculations.
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000080; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Betty grows at a rate of 0.14 cm/hour and she grows at a rate of 0.13 cm/ hour during this 13 hour interval. This is the slowest rate of growth since birth and it happened for both of them at the same time!
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000080; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Lucy notices one last steep slope in the graph of her data right around the 42-48 hours after birth. She investigates further and calculates her growth to be 0.16 cm/hour. Her sister, Betty, grows at a very slow rate of 0.07 cm/hour.

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000080; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Lucy takes a break and eats some watermelon, then she goes back to analyze the data more.
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000080; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Lucy notices she barely grows over the next 12 1/2 hours. (Elapsed time 47.5 hours - 60 hours after birth)Her length increases by only 0.1 cm in this time. Her sister grows 0.4 cm.
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000080; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Even though her sister's rate decreases to 0.03 cm/hour, Lucy feels hers is 0 cm/ hour. She does the calculation and realizes she is actually growing, just at a VERY slow rate of 0.008cm/hour.
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000080; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Lucy's growth rate increases one last time from 60 to 61 1/2 hours after birth. Her rate returns to 0.2 cm/hour. Betty's grows from 13.9 cm to 14.1 cm during this same time. She is growing slower than me here.
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000080; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Lucy's growth levels off here and she grows only 0.1cm over the next 4 hours, (0.025 cm/hour) and reaching her maximum length of 12.2 cm. Over these same 4 hours, Betty grows 0.4 cm which is a rate of 0.1 cm/ hour.
 * <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000080; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">It looks like Betty will grow to a maximum length of 14.5 cm (2.3 cm longer than Lucy) but has another growth spurt between 72-82 hours after birth. She grows another 0.5 cm during these 10 hours, and reaches her maximum length of 15cm.

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000080; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">"Well", she says to her mother, "it seems like Betty and I had similar growth patterns. Our growth rate increased and decreased at mostly the same times. Betty grew at a faster rate than I did sometimes, and sometimes times I grew at a faster rate than her. Over all, she grew at an average rate of 0.13 cm/hour and I grew at 0.09 cm/hour. I think I am just the right size and grew at just the right rate. Betty and I may be sisters and we may be identical in many ways, but she is bigger than me and her growth had more fluctuations than mine. I'm a steady, even grower and I like that! Thanks Mom for helping me learn to accept myself as I am."

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000080; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Lucy's mother asks the girls if they think the type of water they bathe in impacts their growth and rate of growth. Lucy replies "I don't think the purified water hurtmy growth. In fact, I think it contributed to the even growth rate I experienced. Betty agreed. I had tumultuous growth - I grew fast, then slow, then fast again, and just when I thought I was done growing I grew more. It made for rough childhood and adolescence. I'm glad I'm done!"

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000080; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">The sisters continued to bathe every day, each in their respective water types. Lucy, still worrying about the potential harmful effects of regular tap water and Betty still enjoying the ample supply and free cost of municipal water. Betty still teases Lucy over her water choice, but now Lucy just smiles.

// <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">Thoughts for next time: Even though the bowls were next to each other and were not moved during the duration of the experiment, the track lighting in the room, which gives off a considerable amount of heat, points light in different directions and one bowl might have inadvertently received a greater amount of light energy than the other bowl. Next time, I would place the bowls out of direct light, natural or artificial. I also covered the grow beasts' baths with cellophane wrap, but I didn't carefully re-wrap after each measurement. It is possible that holes or spaces were present some of the time for one bowl or the other. If I consider the implications of the cellophane wrap coupled with heat from lights, I wonder if the environmental conditions were as consistent as I intended. Finally, in addition to measuring length, I would measure, height, width and mass to gain a fuller picture of growth. I realize length is just one measurement of growth and may not present a full picture of overall growth. To extend the investigation, I would measure the shrinkage of each grow beast to investigate a) how the growth rate and shrink rate compare and b) if the two sisters shrink in a similar manner. I would also be interested in seeing if the pH of the water impacts their growth, and if there is an optimum pH to maximize growth. I would test the pH of the purified water and tap water I used in this experiment first. //

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000080; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">home <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000080; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Active Learning Investigation <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000080; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">About Me <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000080; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Additional Resources <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #000080; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Back to CUIN561 Wikispace