Let's plant beans

No unit on plants would be complete without having the chance to plant some beans.  So tomorrow, we are going to do just that.

Why am I telling you this?  Well, it goes back to Tommy's (fateful) question about the olive seed (remember?  The one where he asked, 'Would it grow if we planted it?')  At the time, we agreed that it would be quite hard work for a soft sprouting kernel to break its way through the hard seed of an olive.  Hard, but not impossible of course; otherwise.....well, what if a soft kernel was not able to push its way through the hard seed of an olive?

Back to beans.  They usually grow best earlier in the year; now is not really quite the right time to plant bean seeds.  But if we give them a bit of a helping hand, by soaking them overnight, well that may help the soft  kernel of the bean seed push its way through the hard skin of the seed.

So.  We half-filled a beaker with water.  Chloe kindly marked the level with a pen.  Then we dropped in 16 bean seeds.  Then we observed carefully; we wanted to see what changes might have happened by the next morning.  We noticed that two of the beans were floating just under the surface of the water and the rest had sunk to the bottom.

What, then, do you think will have happened by the time we get to school in the morning?

Meghna thought that the two floating beans would also have sunk.

'I think the others will be floating,' suggested Thomas.

Shouq agreed.  'Tomorrow they will all of them go down,' she said.

Tommy was certain.  'They will have sprouted,' he told us.

Seyf added, 'If you have seeds at your house then you plant them they will grow.'