Engineers are using LEGO bricks to build controlled environments to study how variations in climate and soil affect plant growth. They say LEGO bricks “are highly convenient and versatile building blocks” for the studies. While looking for a way to study plant and root growth that was simple, inexpensive and flexible — something that allowed experiments to be reproduced all over the world, even in labs without the latest technologies or the infrastructure required for plant science or agronomy research — researchers thought of LEGO bricks. And it worked.