Effect of central acceleration on the growth of a plant

Abstract

In 2013, NASA conducted a series of experiments to study the growth of plants in microgravity. The interest of replicating the experiment is to study the relation of acceleration with plant growth, which is achieved by the construction of an accelerometer and the germination of different plants under certain conditions. In this paper we present the effects of different gravity values on the growth of a plant. To make the changes, the basic concepts of central acceleration (centripetal acceleration) are considered, with the help of a centrifuge any gravity value is simulated, for this, it is necessary to place the seeds at different distances from a rotation axis which is rotated continuously for several days. Two different systems were considered: a) placing the axis of rotation vertically, with this, the growth of the plants over the course of days will be observed, along with the effects on the auxins, which are responsible for geotropism, that is, the extraction of auxins from the plants placed in the centrifuge will determine the influence of rotation on the concentration of auxins; and b) the growth in the direction of gravity is affected according to the distance taken from the center of the axis of rotation. We also compare the natural growth of plants and the growth affected by the central force.