Background Research

Our topic is air pollutants and their effect on plants. This topic is applicable to the world we live in because in this century we have made many new inventions that have released pollutants into the air. Through our research we learned about sulfur dioxide, and its effect on plants.

In the article “What Are the Requirements for Plant Growth?” we learned that all plants need air, water, warmth, light, carbon dioxide, and plant nutrients to survive.

In the article, “Sulfur Dioxide Damage to Plants” discusses sulfur dioxide and its effect on plants. Sulfur dioxide causes injury when it is absorbed faster than detoxified.

Based on our research, we learned that sulfur dioxide is a very harmful to plants and exposure can have dangerous effects on plant growth. From this, we identified plants as the control in our experiment and sulfur dioxide as our variable. We hypothesize that if plants are exposed to sulfur dioxide, then they will grow slower than a plant that is not exposed to the harmful gas, and that the plants will have deformed tips on the leaves.