Profile

• Time Zone

  Eastern

  
  
• Organization

  Laurel Ridge Community College

  
  
• Role

  Scientist Mentor: I will mentor teams of students online

  
  
• Research Interests (300 words)

  I am interested in understanding how diversity of life if formed by the process of evolution and adaptation and how to conserve this biodiversity.

  
  
• Profile Question 1

  What is the coolest thing you have discovered or learned about plants?

  
  
• Answer the question you selected for profile question 1 here (300 words):

  Plants are much more resilient than animals and very clever than I was thinking before and most people think. They partner with other organisms, hunt, hibernate, swim, and fly to adapt well to their habitats. They range in size from pinhead-sized duckweed to 100m+ Eucalyptus and can grow from scorching hot deserts to cold heights of mountains.

  
  
• Profile Question 2

  What is your favorite plant? Why?

  
  
• Answer the question you selected for profile question 2 here (300 words):

  My favorite plants are orchids. Their diversity, beauty, adaptations, and ubiquity is simply unbelievable. They partner with fungi for seed germination because they do not need to store food in seeds for their babies. They can trap and digest insects to meet their nitrogen needs. They can attract male bees for a pseudo-sex so they can be pollinated. This makes them one of the best groups of plants for me.

  
  
• Profile Question 3

  Can you share a funny/interesting lab or field story?

  
  
• Answer the question you selected for profile question 3 here (300 words):

  When I was a graduate student, I had to cross-pollinate a lot of plants grown in a greenhouse within a short time frame because the flowers would be too old soon. This is a tedious time-consuming process and but I had no time to wait. I was in the greenhouse for long hours fighting with time. One evening I was pollinating them under artificial light that looked very similar to the natural light. I was so busy with my work that I realized that it was already the next morning and that I was pollinating the plants the whole night. I never forget this experience in my life.

  
  
• Capacity: How many teams at a time are you comfortable working with?

  2

  
  

Recent Posts

24fgensicphspos project 12 Binaya Adhikari Nov 11 at 08:49pm

Hi everyone, thank you! I am looking forward to hearing from you about the next experiment. Please keep me posted!

Binaya

24flehmanbhspos project 2 Binaya Adhikari Nov 11 at 08:43pm

Hi Olivia and Nia, Thanks for the update and questions. I am glad that you are starting your next experiment. Upon looking at your questions, yes, light color affects the rate of photosynthesis in all photosynthetic autotrophs, plants, or…

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Hi Olivia and Nia, Thanks for the update and questions. I am glad that you are starting your next experiment. Upon looking at your questions, yes, light color affects the rate of photosynthesis in all photosynthetic autotrophs, plants, or algae, aquatic or terrestrial, because the mechanisms of photosynthesis are the same regardless of where plants live. Plants absorb some light colors better than others because they have different amounts of light-absorbing pigments. For example, chlorophylls are green and are the most common. So, plants do not absorb green much. Chlorophylls reflect green light instead of absorbing it. Do you know which color plants absorb the most? Is this information available in your textbook? Or can you look it up in some good sources online? Regarding the role of pH in photosynthesis, yes, of course, it is affected by pH. Photosynthesis is a series of chemical reactions, and each chemical reaction occurs the best at a particular pH. pH affects rates of photosynthesis in plants regardless of where they live. In addition to light color and pH, what other factors might affect the rate of photosynthesis in aquatic plants? What about temperature and carbon dioxide? These are the questions you can think about when you decide your hypothesis and design your experiment. I hope it helps. Please keep posting and updating. I am looking forward to hearing from you about the next step. 

Binaya

24flehmanbhspos project 2 Binaya Adhikari Nov 4 at 04:44pm

Hi Adrian, Shabria, Olivia, and David, I am glad you conducted photosynthesis experiments with leaf discs today! I am just curious how many cups you used and how many leaf discs were in each cup? Were they (I guess) from a spinach leaf or…

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Hi Adrian, Shabria, Olivia, and David, I am glad you conducted photosynthesis experiments with leaf discs today! I am just curious how many cups you used and how many leaf discs were in each cup? Were they (I guess) from a spinach leaf or something else? Did you use a syringe to remove oxygen from the disks to sink them?

If you had multiple cups, how did they vary from each other? Did you put them at different lights, different color lights, or different distances from light? What was your independent variable?

Also, I guess are you saying the disks floated after they made oxygen and became lighter? 

Binaya