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Classroom Demonstrations and Science Fair Projects in Light-Mediated Plant Development
A simple, solitary developing seedling is an outstanding system to illustrate fundamental principles of biology. Unlike animals, plants are anchored in place, and their environment plays an important part in adjusting growth and behavior. Plants therefore possess intricate systems to sense and respond to even subtle environmental signals. Light is one of the most important signals, as light intensity, color and period of illumination contain tremendous amounts of information from the seedling's perspective.
The Responding to the Rainbow project is a set of modules for the classroom or Science Fair environment that teach basic principles of biology using a simple set of seeds and a unique lighting device. The project is sponsored by the National Science Foundation and administered from the laboratory of Dr. Kevin M. Folta at the University of Florida. The goal is to provide classrooms or individual students an simple means to study the wonders of nature, as revealed by some small yet powerful plants.
This website provides instructions for obtaining materials for classroom or science fair projects. You will find a series of experiments and demonstrations that are fun, fast, safe, inexpensive, and highly effective in illustrating principles of plant biology, genetics, physiology and development. Various experiments are appropriate for different levels of training, from kindergarten through university-level laboratories.
If your class is in North-Central Florida Dr. Folta and the R2R staff can arrange to visit your school to demonstrate the principles in these modules.
In return for our assistance we ask that you report your results here on this website to build a body of information that may prove useful to others, and to science as a whole. Your clever experiment may be the beginning of a whole new area of exciting research. This is a perfect place to begin your exploration and share your results with the scientific community.