Expert: Walter Hintz - 9/23/2005

Question
I am doing a science project on how different types of music effects the growth of beans.  Do you have any experience with this?  Do you have any reasearch books or web sites to help?  I think it might be called acoustic biology.  Can you give any information I could use.  I did the experiment and classical music beat out heavy metal.  Are there any other studies about what farmers have done.  Thank you,  Michael Ps.  I hope you can e mail soon because notes are due in a few days.

Answer
Hi Michael;
Many years ago I some students in biology class who worked on projects like this.  Their results were inconclusive.   My hypothesis would be that sound waves do not affect the growth of beans. Since the effect of sound on living things depends upon some sort of nervous response we have to assume nerve cells in plants which they do not have.
 I know of no scientific studies that indicates otherwise. There is no reason however that you should not design an experiment to test it.  Be sure to use proper controls.  Same amount of light and water on all plants and same soil. Only the sounds should differ. You will have to isolate the plants from all other sounds and be sure to measure accurately.
 One of the students that I mentioned above tried something really different.  Her hypothesis was that plants you talked nicely to would grow better.  So she used two plants. One plant she complimented and told it how lovely it was and the other she insulted and called it ugly and stupid.  Plant 1 grew better and then I found out that she gave it more water than plant 2
  Good luck. Let me know how you do.