OK, I think I’ve devoted far too much time and expensive equipment on this but here it is anyway!

These broad beans were planted as a “fair test” concocted in about five minutes flat between a group of fellow students on the penultimate day of term as far as our formal classroom education is concerned. The experiment happened on the Thursday before we started our first “teaching” gigs in schools on the Monday. For now, then, we are scattered hither and thither in schools across the South West. We’re all working hard to try to become teachers so won’t be together again for a few more weeks.

Because the group are widely dispersed geographically and most of my team mates travelled by train to Uni, I volunteered to take home our experiment and see what happened to it. The four pots each contain a broad bean seed (nice and safe in case a child decides to eat one instead of growing them) and four different growing media. You’ll notice that there is only one pot where the seed has not germinated and that’s the one where the bean was placed in water alone. Interestingly all three germinated as one overnight last night. They were up and doing a bit of photosynthesising when I came down to let the dogs out and make the tea this morning. So, they’ve taken 11 days to germinate.

To the rest of “team Adam” I hope you are all enjoying your ASE – I’m already wishing I don’t have to go back to Uni and want to stay in my school…WRT this test - have I now executed my duty as fully as necessary?