Background When Ionizing radiation comes in contact with living things on an atomic level, it can have several different effects. Sometimes it causes no damage to the cell, and if it does, cells have the ability to repair themselves. However, in other cases, the radiation can damage the DNA and affect the cells ability to reproduce correctly, and thereby cause mutations. In extreme cases, radiation call also kill the cell. (scholes) It has been found that exposure to radiation can cause a considerable range of effects on seeds. These include not only their germination potential, i.e. percentage of seeds germinated overall, but also actual qualities of the germinated seedlings, such as root and shoot length. Decreased levels of photosynthetic …show more content…
This might have had an impact of the growth during the experiment. However, as it was by the end, the greatest affect it had on this experiment was that it made it rather dificult to measure the seedlings by the 10th day, as some were falling apart. All seedlings were nonetheless measured as precisely as possible. The experiment had a duration of 10 days to allow for the seeds to have an adequate amount of time to, not only germinate, but also grow, so the different effects of irradiation on radishes could be suffeciently observed. All Petri dishes containing seeds were placed next to eachother, to more easily ensure a constant temperature, due to this, it is also assumed that they all received the same omount of light. The method of data collection for this experiment was first and foremost to count the successfully germinated seeds from all groups. This is done by observing that the seedling has broken through the seed coat, and at least 20.0 mm of either shoot and/or root is present. Secondly, data for this experiment has been collected by, as accurately as possible (many seedlings were curly and twisted) measuring the length of the seedlings after they were given 10 days to germinate and grow. Analysis of germination …show more content…
The standard deviation of days to germinate for all trials, is also fairly low, which suggest that the mean of this data is reliable, and therefore is the clear correlation between irradiation and days it takes the seeds to germinate also reliable. It is also clear that no seed germinated at 4000 krad irradiation, as it is likely too high a dose for a sufficient number of cells to