Fruits vs. Vegetables
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Goal: We wanted to see if a mealworm would have a prefer a certain type of food. We used a piece of an orange, apple, and potato.
Materials:
Hypothesis: We believe that they will go towards the fruit and not the veggies. We believe this because the fruit has more sugar and the vegetables have more acid.
Procedure: We placed 2 fruits, strawberry and blackberry, and 2 veggies, cucumber and tomato, in the four corners of the box to see what one they would go to. We covered them for five minutes to see which ones they preferred. At first we had bran for them in the middle but they didn’t want to come out of it so we removed the bran and isolated them so that they had to go somewhere.
After we did this experiment we decided to manipulate the variables so the only options were the cucumber and strawberry.
Observations:
Results: Once we removed the bran from the box we saw that the most went to the cucumber and the tomato. There are six on the cucumber, three on the tomato, one on the blackberry, two on the strawberry, and three in the middle. We believe that the reason for them going to cucumber is because of the water content it contains.
In the third round we only placed the strawberry and the cucumber in to see which one they preferred. The result was the majority of them (8) went to the cucumber. They burrowed under the cucumber and moved it on their own. Strawberries have fungicides on them and are potent so they would not go to it.
Next we tried onions and broccoli. They went mainly for the onions, a couple were at the broccoli. One is burrowing into the broccoli. Six by the onion, two in the middle, 2 by the broccoli.
Independent variables: 'Age' of food, temperature of food.
Dependent variables: Mealworms' preference
Second round (photos unavailable)
Hypothesis: We believe that they will go towards the fruit and not the veggies. We believe this because the fruit has more sugar and the vegetables have more acid.
Procedure: We placed an apple and a carrot on either side of the plate to see which one they would go to. We covered them for five minutes to see which ones they preferred. At first we had bran for them in the middle but they didn’t want to come out of it so we removed the bran and isolated them so that they had to go somewhere.
Results: When we removed the covering, we saw that Penny, Bobby-Joe, Randy, Karren Jr., Billy-Joe, and Sandy had gone to the carrot, while the others remained where they had started. We believe that they went to the carrot because of the water content it contains or because of pesticides that were present on the skin of the apple.