we believe that the aeroponic garden will use more water than the deep water culture system because of the size difference. we believe that it changes how the water is used.

Hydroponics is a gardening technique that does not require soil, and uses only water to give it nutrients, oxygen, and plant life. Hydroponics help water conservation and helps countries with no form of soil to create agriculture throughout the country, and are a effective way to create agriculture as they allow minute control over some environmental conditions like ph level balance and temperature. They also maximize the exposure to nutrients and water to make plant growth efficient. Hydroponic gardening also gives out nutrient solutions specifically for the plant growing. Hydroponics also allows you to control the amount of light the plant receives and for how long you let it receive light. Ph levels while using hydroponics can be measured and adjusted for the plants needs. With this highly efficient, customized, and controlled environment, hydroponics give the plant so much growth and health. With hydroponics, many risks are avoided compared to planting the plants in soil, as harmful parasites or pests can affect the plant. With hydroponics, plants are also safe from invasive species like hogs or apple snails that affect your crops. With all these risk factors gone, hydroponics makes healthy and high quality fruits and vegetables. The best water for hydroponics is reverse osmosis water. The reason for this is because water purity is very strong in transferring nutrients to the plant .

DWC systems, or Deep Water Culture systems, is a method of hydroponic gardening used by a lot of people around the world. This method is called the Deep Water Culture because there’s 3 different parts needed for this, which are oxygen, water, and nutrients. First, oxygen is needed for this method because since we aren’t going to use soil for growing, the plant would need to have oxygen so it won’t drown. Secondly, water is needed because it is used as an alternative for soil which means you don't need to water it! Lastly, nutrients is needed because good quality soil contains lots of macro and micro nutrients for the plant to survive. But we’re not using soil to grow, so we need to make them by supplying the oxygen-water with nutrients. Deep Water Culture systems are very popular due to it being really simple. It also has a really fast grow rate for plants which means that you can grow plants in about a month rather than about 2 months by regular growing. Deep water culture systems also are low maintenance once you assemble them. Although there are a bunch of upsides on this system, Deep Water Culture systems also have downsides. Some examples are its pH level and nutrient concentration going up and down rapidly, that it's really easy to mess up the calibration due to the small scale, and it's also really hard to maintain a consistent water temperature. Even with these downsides, Deep Water Culture systems are easy to maintain if you constantly check up on your plants. 

Aeroponics is a method of hydroponic gardening similar to hydroponics. What makes this different from hydroponics however, is that the roots are suspended in the air and are getting irrigated by the nutrient filled mist. Since we’re using air to grow, the plant will have more oxygen which leads to more positive things like healthier plant and an increased growth rate for crops. Lots of people love using this method. This is because first, it's really reliable. If you plan on harvesting year-round and want to sell them for profit, this is a really good choice. Another reason why is because is if you want a higher growth rate, you should use this method so you can have a replacement for your plant/product. This method was first used in the 1920s-1990s for studying root growth. During this time, it wasn’t a popular method of growing plants until NASA started seeing this as an option to grow food in soilless environments. For example, space. Aeroponics quickly gained popularity in places where the traditional farming method is not possible. Examples are highly urbanized city-states such as Monaco. Aeroponics can grow basically almost anything that a hydroponic can, but hydroponics they cannot handle root and vegetable crops.

manipulated variable: water usage inside the system, Nutrients put inside the water independent variable: system type controlled variable: temperature, seeds

1st Step: grab the bins and start setting up the water 2nd step: add the water stone and pump to the bin hole and start fixing ph 3rd step: add the rockwool cubes into the cups and add it to the system 4th step: place the seeds and add the nutrient blends to the systems 5th step: check ph daily and add nutrient blends.

Day 1: ph levels increased overnight due to putting in nutrient blends and not checking ph

Day 2: water on the deep water culture system went down to 9.6 cm from its initial depth of 11 cms Ph increased overnight We think some seeds are sprouting Ph spiked again Added water to the experiment because the rockwool cubes wouldn't touch the water Fixed ph level

Day 3: noticed some sort of “crust” forming on the system and LED lights fell off. Ph level increased again and we don't know why LED lights have half colours? Confirmation of seed sprouting

Day 4: more seeds sprout Grow lights are more effective Starting aeroponic garden today Day 5: added more towers for more seeds Measuring water level Aeroponic garden: 15.2 cm Deep water culture garden: 8.3

Day 6: more seeds starting to sprout and growing at the bottom

Day 7: plants sprouted faster in aeroponic garden Day 8: plants starting to die in both of them and we are planning to replant them.

we have analyzed that the aeroponic garden took more. I believe this might've happened due to the rockwool cubes not touching the water. we might've needed to make the seeds sprouts first and making the cubes more moist. We have also noticed the plants dying. its most likely because the plants didn't have enough nutrients in one and more in the other. The cold is one reason that the plants ended up dying even though they were doing good at first. A investment in heaters would've most likely help the plants grow in both systems. a surprise that happened during the experiment was that after a 5 day break, the deep water culture system froze up with a bunch of crust. it might've been because the water was insoluble after putting too much which leads to nutrient blend problems. The nutrient blends were not able to break down because of the ph levels that were too high.

In conclusion, aeroponics consumed more water than DWC. Even though we made some errors in the process, we still found out that the aeroponics used more water than the DWC. Our hypothesis was wrong, even when we setted the aeroponics systems later than the DWC.

Hydroponics can be used worldwide for places that don’t have enough soil for agriculture, transforming a sandy, or rocky, and a busy area into a place for agriculture. Hydroponics is the best way to overall grow plants in itself and make a better environment for the food we are consuming because of external factors like invasive species, or pesticides affecting the food we eat. Hydroponics will forever be the best gardening technique in my opinion because of these reasons.

- didn't put enough nutrients - resulted in plants dying - put aeroponics near winter where it had cold temperatures - didn't check up on the plants a lot - resulted in the first bullet point

Images: https://earth.org/hydroponic-farming/ Sources: https://www.freshwatersystems.com/blogs/blog/what-are-hydroponic-systems?srsltid=AfmBOorWFQZORQP9Wgm-_OXTlMm5wnBKOobrgwD2iRM78KLqC_6_Zc64      https://www.youtube.com/shorts/vBYkMeQcNM8 https://www.epicgardening.com/deep-water-culture-get-started/ https://getgrowee.com/ph-controller-in-dwc/ https://www.lettusgrow.com/aeroponic-technology https://www.livinggreensfarm.com/blog/what-is-aeroponics

Our parents, Ascension of Our Lord school, Ms. Pepper, & Mrs Deck helped us make this experiment possible. They provided us with the materials needed to start and to end this experiment.