Humus Lab Report

In the humus lab were were trying to find out if hydrogen peroxide would cause a reaction and show us the amount of humus in the soil by putting gas into a graduated cylinder with water to make the water level lower therefore showing us how much humus the material being tested contained. It showed that the sand was lacking humus but the mushroom compost was the most rich in humus. My hypothesis was correct because I predicted that the mushroom compost would produce the greatest amount of humus out of the four samples with sand being the least since it is just ground up rocks. In the experiment we determined that compost is the most nutritionist soil for humus to grow and thrive in with shaded soil next because the shade lets it dry slower
allowing for bacteria to grow because its damp all the time and with sunny soil its dry and the sun is killing the bacteria. With sand just being fine rocks with very little if any humus in it. In the set up I made sure that I held down the graduated cylinder firmly so that I would’nt cut off the flow of hydrogen peroxide into the graduated cylinder by sqeezing the rubber tubing to tight so I kept a light but firm enough grip so that the water wasn’t just slowly seeping out. If I were to do this experiment again I would test it multiple times because I don’t think the sand would have any humus on it if any so I would wash the sand off in a fine strainer and let it dry out because that would make sure that there wasn’t humus on other materials that touched the sand. Also because the graduated cylinder is lifted for the rubber tubing to go into it I would get something the size of a graduate cylinder in it though with a hole in it to run rubber tubing through so human error would’nt effect the experiment. Because if you held it down to tight you wouldn’t get a high enough result and to light you would be letting more water out than the gas was. Which would make the experiment not able to reproduce results accuretly and ultimetly not a accurate experiment resu