Terrarium Lab Report
The objective of this project is to see how an ecosystem sustains itself in an enclosed system. We built a small ecosystem in a container and took care of it to see what would happen here is our hypothesis.
Hypothesis:The small shade loving plants will receive shade from the larger plants and this will keep the small plants moist. We will take care of the larger plants manually.
Materials:
- Circular Glass Container
- Pebbles, rocks (white)
- Charcoal
- Soil
- Moss
- Small ferns, baby tears
- Earthworms
- Water
- Spray bottle
Methods/ Procedure:
- We had to find our Glass Container
- We put sand, then pebbles, then charcoal, then dirt into our terrarium.
- Then we looked for some worms.
- We are going to put the worms in the container
- Finally, we will put the ferns, the steam of water, and the rocks with moss into it.
Day 0: Began to build our terrarium and watered it.
Day 1: Plants are in soil with worms and watered.
End of week 1: Plants have been slowly growing with water everyday.
End of week 2: Our week break and plants didn't get much water.
End of week 3: Plants got a lot of water to rejuvenate themselves.
End of week 4: Our plants have significantly grown and our terrarium was a huge success throughout the weeks.
Results: Our results was really simple and clear, after about 4 weeks of continuously watering our plants and keeping them in sunlight, our club grew around an inch. But our moss died a little near the end due to less sunlight because the club moss was taking up most of the sunlight while the moss got most of its shadows. Our Terrarium was a success and my hypothesis was correct.
Analysis Prompts: Our terrarium had biotic and abiotic limiting factors. The biotic factors in our terrarium was the moss and worms. The worms eat the soil and decompose better nutrients into the soil. The important abiotic factors in our terrarium are the sunlight, temperature, soil, and water. The sunlight and the temperature must be stable enough to keep the grass and the moss healthy. We put the terrarium close to the window to allow it to get maximum sunlight and consistent heat. We also watered it four or five days a week to ensure that the moss and worms had enough water to survive, but we also made sure not to drown them either.
Many nutrient cycles also took place in our terrarium. One cycle that occurred in our terrarium was the carbon cycle. First, the moss used photosynthesis to absorb energy from the sun. Then, the moss produced oxygen that the ants use in respiration, and they added some oxygen to the atmosphere of the classroom. The moss also produces glucose, that when the other organisms eat, gain that energy. Next, the worms and parts of the moss dies, transferring the energy to the living worms.*-\*/9Another cycle was the water cycle. When we watered the environment, water would slowly evaporate over the until we watered it the next time. This made it so that the water did not evaporate all at once. Instead, the water would slowly evaporate back into the soil and out the top. Also, when the plants absorb the water, they expel the water using transpiration. The final cycle that occurs in our terrarium is the nitrogen cycle. When the grasses absorb nitrogen from the atmosphere, they expel ammonia. In a process known as nitrogen fixation, bacteria convert ammonia to nitrates . The ammonia disappears and nitrates thrive, which produce proteins. Finally, proteins add nitrogen to the atmosphere.