How do you measure the growth of carrots.?

Question

I'm doing this experiment and I need to find out how to measure the height of a carrot. Do you measure the leaves or the root and how are you suspose to measure the root........pull it out of the ground?

Answer 1

Think about what you want to measure -- some of the possibilities are:

total mass

number of leaves

length of leaves

breadth of leaves

length x breadth

length of primary root

diameter of primary root (where?)

mass of root

Generally speaking, you're going to want to have several groups of individuals growing under similar conditions if you have to do "destructive testing" like pulling a carrot to weigh and measure the root.

If you're after only lengths, you might be able to get seedlings started against a pane of glass.  Cover the glass with black paper or foil unless you're actually measuring the roots.