I'm instructed to wrtie a full lab raport for a lab I did a couple of months ago. My aim was to find the most efficient concentration of fertilizer to grow red lentils. I planned to do this by taking the average of the number of lentils sprouted each day for eight days and divide that by the concentration used for that sample, then use the relative ratio of that to draw a conclusion.

Question

My issue is that I used a sample with no concentration, which leaves me with a 0 in my equations. I.e. 0.75/0. I have dwelled on this for ours and can't figure out a way around it. I tried adding a konstant to every denumenator but that did not work since the ratio was not the same as before when I tested.
Sorry if this is hard to understand, English is not my native language and I'm pretty sleepy. Any help would be greatly apprecieated.

Answer 1

You are implying that the number of sprouts is proportional to the concentration
sprouts = k * c
in which case k would be undefined for zero c
However I doubt if that sort of relationship exists.
the number of sprouts probably does increase with c but levels off at some value where more fertilizer does no more good and number of sprouts probably increases fastest with small fertilizer concentrations.
Therefore I would tend to assume a function like
sprouts = max (1 - e^-kc )
when c = 0, e^-kc = e^0 = 1
so sprouts = max (0) = 0
when c gets large , e^-kc gets small
so sprouts ----> max
then you fool around with k and max to fit your experiment

Answer 2

Thank you for your help and time.

Answer 3

You are welcome, good luck !