Brine Shrimp Lab Report

Brine Shrimp Lab Reflection

After performing the Brine Shrimp Inquiry lab my group found that .5% salinity of 50 mL of water was the ideal salinity for hatching brine shrimp. To figure out what salinity was ideal we tested three different levels of salinity. The first thing we did when we began the lab was choose three different salinities to test. My group choose .5%, 3%, and 5%, next we choose the amount of water that would be in each dish; we decided on 50 mL of water. We then calculated the amount of salt to put in each dish. To do this we created proportions. We calculated that we need to put .25 mL of salt in 50 mL of water to create .5% salinity, 1.5 mL of salt in 50 mL of water to create 3% salinity, and 2.5 mL of salt

The first major clue that there is an error somewhere is our data. We found .5% to be the ideal salinity while all other groups found the ideal salinity to be higher, around 3%. Our data is the outlier of the group. This could have happened for many reasons. Our group used much more water than most other groups, because of this our percentages for salinities are different. We could have made a simple error in our calculations causing us to put the wrong about of salt in each dish. Miscommunication between group members may have caused the dishes to be mislabeled. If I were to recreate this experiment I would do a few things different. First I would make sure to have a control group, I would make that control group a dish of water with a salinity of 0. I would also label both the lid of the dish and the dish itself to keep the dishes from getting confused. Next time I would not add air bubbles into the dish once the brine shrimp eggs were added in but before we put the eggs in the water. I would do this to prevent eggs from being moved from one dish to another or sucking eggs out of the dishes. When recreating the lab, I would take precautions to ensure the outcome would be as accurate as possible. These precautions would keep the data from being inaccurate. Before starting the lab I would make sure variables and controls were well defined. I would also have someone else in my group check my calculations before starting. Doing these before starting my lab will keep my results