What this student is doing is collecting data. So, he wants to check how many life forms there are in the waters nearby. In order to do so, he has to take a sample, and look at it through a microscope so as to determine the number. So, he collected a sample which is his data. He is not drawing conclusions yet, but rather counting these organisms. He is not making a peer review - his peers aren't even mentioned here. He is not forming a hypothesis because he is just counting at this point.
Answer:
Primary meristematic tissue helps the plant increase in length or vertical growth, meaning it helps the plant grow up toward the sun and down into the soil.
The main reason that most farmers use stem cuttings rather than just planting a seed is that a tree's genetic variation will occur. The seeds of many fruit trees tend to vary differently from the parent, because seeds themselves are produced by sexual reproduction (i.e they receive genes from a male and female to form). As they are a cross from two sets of genes, many fruit trees are not “true to seed”. Their seeds will produce a generally different variety of tree from the parent. When using stem cuttings, it's almost like a cloning process.