For my independent investigation i decided to work with the mealworms. I chose to investigate whether whey protein powder would have any effect on the rate of the mealworms growth and if it made them grow any larger than they would have if they had just been eating the porridge oats that they were usually fed.
To do this i put three mealworms in isolation and each day would feed one its usual diet of porridge oats, one whey protein powder and the other a mixture of the two. After a week of them being on these diets i weighed them. As i had expected the mealworm that was fed just the protein powder increased in weight the most however the other two mealworms lost weight, something i wasn't expecting to happen. If i were to do this investigation again i would monitor the mealworms more closely and i would also have more meal worms on each diet and possibly for a longer time as i don't think a week was long enough.
Overall i really enjoyed doing this investigation as it allowed me to increase my knowledge about all of the model organisms at UTC which i have found really interesting.
Olivia, what a smart idea! By the whey, what is whey? You know what the whey and the oats are made from, so is there any way you can rationalise the results you obtained? How accurate is your weighing? Do you think a larger sample size (more mealworms) would help? Now is the time to carry on with the experiment! When you observe something unexpected, that's when Science gets interesting!
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