Plant Chat

A 1998 Natural Systems class conducted research concerning the effect music, touch, and speech on plants. This group tested six groups of plants: one exposed to human touch, one exposed to classical music, one exposed to reggae music, one exposed to heavy metal, one exposed to spoken voice, and one control group which was left alone. They found that the plants exposed to classical music faired the best and the plants exposed to reggae music faired the worst. Our results may be relevant to the field agriculture. If we discovered that plants benefit from a certain tone of voice, then these results could be used in the field of agriculture to increase productivity.

We plan to raise four groups of twenty plants of soybeans in the Western greenhouse. The first group of plants will be exposed to no human voice, the second group of plants will be exposed to a recorded male voice, to a recorded female voice, to a recorded primal scream. Each of these recordings will be five minutes long. All aspects not relating to human voice will be constant for each group. Over the course of five weeks we will expose the plants to our recordings four times weekly. We will measure the height of each plant and number of leaves on each plant on each Thursday. Our experiment is statistically sound because weíre eliminating all variables by housing the plants in the same environment and controlling all their resources.

The materials required for this lab are as follows: soil, seeds, water, planting trays, a tape recorder, a tape cassette, a timer (for determining how long our recordings are), a ruler, a measuring cup and Statview for interpreting our results.

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• Is it a pseudocience (9/30/02) [ Contributor: Nimrod Francisco-Section: Zinn ]
• do music affect plant growth (11/11/01) [ Contributor: -Section: cummins ]
• (11/3/01) [ Contributor: -Section: ]
• nnikobgk (2/24/01) [ Contributor: saki-Section: mfsjnblehiqv ]
• growth of flowers (2/13/01) [ Contributor: none-Section: brittany ]
• Response III (10/14/99) [ Contributor: Brandy McQueary-Section: Nicholson ]
• response (10/13/99) [ Contributor: Julie Housiaux-Section: Nicholson ]
• variables (10/12/99) [ Contributor: Amber Bennett, Andrew Watkins, Sarah Canole-Section: Nicholson ]

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