Question

Why it was important that Gregor Mendel used thousands of pea plants in his experiments? Would Mendel have found the same results if he had used only twenty plants? Explain.

Answer 1

These are plants that always produce offspring that look like the parent. By experimenting with true-breeding pea plants, Mendel avoided the appearance of unexpected traits in offspring that might occur if the plants were not true breeding.

Answer 2

Step-by-step explanation:

Gregor Mendel used thousands of pea plants in his experiments to ensure that his results were accurate and reliable. By using a large sample size, he was able to reduce the effects of chance and random variation in his experiments. This is important because biological systems are complex and variable, and small sample sizes can lead to inaccurate or misleading results.

Mendel's experiments involved crossing pea plants with different traits (e.g., tall vs. short, yellow vs. green), and he counted the number of offspring with each trait. He found that the offspring followed predictable patterns of inheritance, which he summarized in his laws of inheritance.

If Mendel had used only twenty plants in his experiments, he may not have obtained the same results. With a small sample size, chance events can have a greater impact on the results. For example, if he crossed two pea plants with different traits and obtained only a few offspring, it's possible that chance events (such as mutations or environmental factors) could have influenced the results. This could lead to false conclusions about the inheritance of the traits.

Therefore, using a large sample size was critical to Mendel's success in developing his laws of inheritance. It allowed him to detect patterns that were consistent across many different crosses, and to demonstrate that these patterns were not the result of chance variation.