Experiment+7+-+Warm+vs.+Cool

__**Warm and Cool Environment** __

R esearch on mealworms indicates that storing mealworms in a warm location will help speed up their development. **//Hypothesis://**  Mealworms develop faster in warm environments to cool environments.

**//Prediction://**  We predict that the mealworms kept at school in a warm environment will develop at a faster rate than the meal worms kept in Elise’s basement, which is a cool damp environment.

**//Materials://**  Box with 8 mealworms kept in warm environment, box with 4 mealworms kept in cool environment.

**//Procedure://**  Elise brought home 4 mealworms to keep in her basement, which is unfinished and not insulated. Elise only feed the mealworms apples, and did not take them out of the cool environment. We recorded how many layers they shed and did a basic comparison of the warm environment and cool environment mealworms.

**//Controlled Variables://**  Food (only apples), Temperature (cool non-insulated basement), location (box).

**//Responding Variables://**  The developmental stage of the mealworms after a 3 week period.

**//Manipulated Variables: N/A//**

//**Observations: **// <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;"> After observing the warm environment mealworm, it became quite clear that the cool environment mealworms were developing at a much slower rate. The first day we got our mealworms we painted different coloured dots on each mealworm, so that we could tell them apart from one another. It was not long after this that we noticed the warm environment mealworms were shedding their skin, and soon after we could not distinguish between them. The mealworms that were kept in the cool environment only shed twice during the duration of this experiment, and one mealworm still has its dots from the first day. We have not seen any changes in the cool environment mealworms, and we have seen a number of changes in our warm environment mealworms.

//**<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Conclusion / Comments: **// <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;"> Research on mealworms indicates that storing them in a warm location will help seed up their development drastically. An ideal temperature to speed up their development is between 25 and 30 degrees. Although our warm environment mealworms did not live in a temperature of 25 to 30 degree, they did develop faster than the cool environment mealworms. Therefore our experiment and discoveries support of prediction.