The purpose of this experiment was to test how fertilizer impacts the growth of microorganisms of Susan’s Swamp, by measuring the amount of microorganisms found in each sample. I was looking for moving microorganisms because it was difficult to distinguish between the fertilizer and the microorganisms. According to Good and Beatty nitrogen is found in fertilizer and when the nitrogen is added to the aquatic ecosystem it will cause a flourishing of microbial growth, which can result in a “dead zone” (2). I hypothesized that the more fertilizer added to the Susan’s Swamp solutions, the more microorganisms I would find, because of the nutritional properties in fertilizer such as nitrogen.
Methods:
In this experiment four samples from Susan’s Swamp were collected into four Mason jars and brought to Ivey. Then using a scale I measured 10 grams, 1 gram, and 0.1 grams of fertilizer and mixed it using a magnetic stirrer and stir bar into the Mason jars, with each jar containing one
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Next was the second trial slide from the 10 grams and found two moving microorganisms. Lastly I found zero moving microorganism in the third 10 grams slide. I then moved on to the 1 gram trial slides and found zero moving microorganisms, however I did find six moving microorganisms on the second trial slide for the 1 gram sample. For the last trial for 1 gram I found three moving microorganisms. I moved onto the 0.1 gram sample and found four moving microorganisms in the first trial, zero microorganisms in the second trial, and two in the third 0.1 gram trial. Lastly I wanted to see how many moving microorganism there would be in the sample that did not have any fertilizer in it. I found one moving microorganism in the first control sample, five in the second trial sample, and zero in the third trial sample. The data is summarized in the table and graph