SpongeBob loves to garden and wants to grow lots of pink flowers for his pal Sandy. He bought a special Flower Power fertilizer to see if it will help plants produce more flowers. He plants two plants of the same size in separate containers with the same amount of potting soil. The places one plant in a sunny window and waters it every day giving it fertilizer each day. He places the other plant on a shelf in a closet and waters it every day but does not give it any fertilizer. The plant in the sunny window ended up producing many more flowers than did the plant in the closet. Should SpongeBob conclude that giving Flower Power fertilizer to plants will cause the plant to produce more flowers

No

Explanation:

It would be wrong for SpongeBob to conclude that giving flower power fertilizer helps the plant to produce more flowers based on the experimental design.

There are fundamental flaws in the experimental design that could make the conclusion to be wrong:

In order to investigate if the flower power fertilizer has the capacity to help the plant to produce more flowers, the two plants used should have been subjected to the same conditions barring only the fertilization application. Whatever difference that is observed in the number of flowers produced can then be attributed to the fertilizer.

Also, the number of plants for each group (with and without fertilizer) is too small to arrive at a reliable conclusion. In scientific investigations, replicating measurements increases the statistical power of the resulting data and raises the reliability of the conclusion.

producers: apple trees, potatoes, carrots, grains, acorns, cabbage, grass, corn, lettuce

consumers: deer, mice, rabbits, chickens, squirrels, horses, worms, cows

predators: eagles, frogs, wolves, owls