3. HYPOTHESIS
Pillbugs that are placed in different soils will
burrow at different speeds, specifically,
pillbugs placed in loamy soil will burrow the
fastest.
4. METHODOLOGY
1. Bake (each type of) dirt for 30 minutes at 200°
2. Allow dirt to cool until normal temperature
3. Rehydrate soil with 45 mL of water
4. Allow water to soak into soil
5. Put rehydrated soil into a beaker
6. Place one (hiker) Pill bug on top of the dirt
7. Start stopwatch when Pill bug is placed on the dirt mound
8. Stop stopwatch when the Pill bug has burrowed in the dirt
9. Record the time it took for the Pill bug to burrow into the dirt in data
table
10. Repeat these steps 3 times per bug for each type of dirt (3 types of dirt)
9. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Maurya, Narendra. "Different Types of Soil – Sand, Silt, Clay and Loam." Madhav
University. Accessed October 5, 2021. https://madhavuniversity.edu.in/soil-
types.html.
Pill Bugs PNG Transparent Image. Photograph. PNG Arts. Accessed October 5,
2021. https://www.pngarts.com/explore/80761.
Pill Bugs Transparent Image. Photograph. PNG Arts. July 26, 2018. Accessed
October 5, 2021. https://www.pngarts.com/explore/80755.
Simmons, Lydia. Pill Bugs. Photograph. Free PNGing. Accessed October 5, 2021.
https://freepngimg.com/png/31756-pill-bugs.
Editor's Notes
#5:Throughout our experiment, we discovered through our data that Pill bugs burrow the fastest, and most often in Loamy soil, which is fertile in nutrients and minerals. Coming in a close second to Loamy, we determined that Sandy soil was the most preferred to burrow in by the bugs. This may be as a result of Sandy soil containing a larger water content than slit, pill bugs
Although our hypothesis was technically correct, there are multiple adjustments to the experiment that could be made. Throughout the testing, the pillbugs actually did not want to burrow very often and it a significant amount of them were capped off on time to burrow. In retrospect, it would have been smart to do some more research about the actual burrowing of pillbugs so that we could understand why they weren’t burrowing for us. If it so happened to be that pillbugs just can’t be made to burrow, then maybe we could’ve adjusted it to seeing how fast they do something else, like how fast a roller curls up. We found that a lot of our results relied on the bug, rather than the soil, so it was not made clear that any of the bugs were really that impacted by the types of soil. Controlling different variables in the same soil and comparing those could be a way to figure out whether the bugs do have soil preferences. The main takeaway is that my group should have done more research about the burrowing itself rather than just the types of soil.
