The Effects of Acid Rain on the Fast Plant Brassica Rapa

Introduction This experiment was designed to discover whether or not acid rain stunts the growth of the fast plant brassica rappa. When pollution from various sources combines with moisture in the atmosphere, it falls back to earth as acid rain. Acid rain pollutes lakes, damages trees and wildlife, and washes nutrients out of the soil. Data collected from the early 1960's from New Hampshire's Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest showed that nearly half of the soil nutrients normally responsible for neutralizing acid had been leached from the soil, rendering vegetative growth nearly impossible. Acid rain is blamed for the death of more than half of the mature red spruce trees in the Adirondack and Green mountains, and is also fingered in the destruction of more than 80% of some sugar maple strands in Pennsylvania. Our experiment was designed to see if acid rain would have the same deadly effects on brassica rappa. To do this we squirted the soil with an acidic solution that would mimic that of acid rain once a week, and then documented plant height, number of leaves, and finally number of seed pods.