Final Update on Tobacco Seeds in DDW

Well oh well. Look at what we have here. I’m so excited I can hardly contain myself…

…ahem.

So it’s been a while since I updated and that’s because I’ve pretty much left the seeds to their own accord. I didn’t want to end the experiment officially because I wanted to see if there would be any other startling results, but it was pretty much over. Now I think I got some startling results. Let’s talk about this:

  • I took pictures of 3 different samples, one dark virginia in ddw, one dark virginia in tap water, and presoaked dark virginia in ddw. The pictures are lit (to see the results) using my new Droid Bionic camera led (for flash) as the lighting source.
  • Two pictures are of the same sample. One is very well lit and the other is dark, but with some side light (I liked the way it looked artistically so I included it and made it the feature image). In these two images I wanted to illustrate that the seedlings were fully germinated (and probably at max growth submerged in water), but that the root hairs I adoringly refer to as root fro almost have completely filled the solution! What the hell could this mean? I no longer think it is a lack of nutrients. Why? Because this effect is only seen in the samples of ddw. The DI water samples which never had quite as much root fro (but quite a bit) looks to have actually gone into remission, meaning the root fro seems to be getting less.
  • To contrast that I showed what it is like in a typical sample of tap water. Note that there is root fro in there (the plant on the bottom has its hairs visible) but they are nowhere near filling the sample. Crazy!
  • To make matters even more crazy, the presoaked seeds in ddw haven’t even germinated properly and there are (is?) root fro everywhere! Both presoaked samples are like this. On top of that it looks like presoaking may have hindered or impaired the germination process because every sample’s growth is stunted. The root fro amounts per sample is typical though (meaning ddw has the most, di water next most, and tap water the least amount of fro).

Holy moley! I don’t even know what to make of this. I’m going to re-setup this experiment in a few days but include D2O (like 33% and 66% amounts) to see if the root hairs are a similar phenomenon and to what extent.

All I can say is someone get me a molecular comb!