A student performs an experiment to determine if adding fertilizer to plants increases the number of flowers that the plants pro
duce. The student believes that the plants will produce greater numbers of flowers as the amount of fertilizer increases. Five groups of 10 plants each (A-E) are grown in identical pots filled with equal amounts of identical soil. The amount of water and sunlight are constant for all groups, as is the room temperature. Each plant group is given plant fertilizer according to the table below.
The experimenter hypothesized that fertilizer would make the plants grow taller. The results show that, on average, plants with fertilizer grew 0.7 cm taller over the course of 12 days. This small amount of height increase could be attributed to the fertilizer or may be caused by natural differences in the plants.
