Conclusion: McKenzie Czabaj
Throughout this experiment I have learned a lot, especially that soil thieves do exist. The part that stood out to me the most was how important soil truly is. Soil isn't just "dirt" as the average person would say. Instead it's a living entity. Even though our microorganism experiment showed no microorganisms at the time, we found other organisms such as worms and insects while working with our soil. These creatures work very hard to help decompose and add nutrients to the soil. Without these creatures, our soil would be just dirt. Before I was oblivious to the fact that soil needs nutrients or else plants won't grow. I always just assumed soil was soil and plants could grow anywhere they wanted depending on their individual adaptations, but I was wrong. After testing our soil and finding trace elements of Nitrogen, Phosphorous, and Potassium, I had little hope for our controlled experiment. When we remediated our soil, we had to add lots of elements in hopes of making our lettuce grow. Our controlled experiment did grow, but very very little. The remediated soil produced 5X or more sprouts. This proves that we need to take care of our soil as best as possible in order to continue providing for our population, because once its gone, its gone; well for our lifetime at least.

Martin Niemiec: Well, really, over the course of this experiment I learned a lot of common sense and specific things. Take care of the soil so you don't overuse it, sand drains better than clay, plants need nutrients like N, K, P to grow... Things that kinda make sense on their own. At my dad's house there is a garden, and I've been helping in that garden for years. Instead of being an enlightening experience for me (I've already seen all the worms, let the soil lie fallow, planted beans to get some nitrogen back...), this lab was mostly scientific practice, because I've already come into contact with the bigger concepts. What I learned was more like how to use a Bunsen burner and the crucible tongs, how to use a drying oven and test for nutrients in the soil. Of course, everyone should be aware that soil is a living, breathing, organic thing, and that taking care of it is in our (and the planet's) best interests, but I can't really claim these are things I learned from this lab. However, this lab was still a fun and rewarding experience, and I did acquire a lot of knowledge about our local soil, like how nutrient poor ours turned out to be. Illinois is a farmland state, too, so this showed me how much fertilizer farmers have to use in order to grow all the food we need, and put that in a bit of perspective. Despite already knowing about the importance of soil, when you see how excited all those people were about... dirt, you can't help but look at it with a little bit more reverence and appreciation. Thanks, dirt.