| Explore | From previous investigations, things like leaf disks floating with and without carbon dioxide had been talked about, and experiments with light and dark areas. Other things that had been talked about that helped in the investigation were cellular respiration, cell makeup, and things like chloroplast. This investigation was chosen because it was an interesting it was interesting to think about how different plants photosynthesize. |
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| Research Question | This test was to find out if basil photosynthesizes faster than zebrina. The question was thought of by observing how different plants react in lieu to them each having different pigments and seeing how these different exposures to the light spectrum would react with photosynthesis as well as seeing if these plants, surrounded by light and dark areas, would react. This was to see how different plants grow through different pigments and different exposures and how these can grow in comparison to things like trees. |
| Predictions | There was numerous possible outcomes for the study given the variables that were available. To say a few, the basil could have floated faster than zebrina or vice versa. Both could have floated the same or neither of them could have floated at all. The prediction with this information, was that the basil will float faster surrounded by more light, and zebrina will float faster surrounded by shadows. The idea that this would have happened was because in the basil plant, it has more of the chlorophyll pigment and these pigments have more UV “power” because of where they are on the full light spectrum. |
| Experimental Design | So our plan for this experiment is to see the difference between a basil leaf discs and a zebrena leaf discs and their photosynthesis rates. This is done by seeing how many of these leaf discs can float in the baking soda water in 12 minutes under an artificial light or shadow. The dependent variable in the experiment would be the amount of leaf discs floating and the independent variable would be the species of plant. This depending on which plant has the most floating leaf disks is which plant can begin photosynthesis in these conditions. What we will keep the same is the amount of baking soda solution used in the cups and the amount of time they will be under the artificial light. The control group in this experiment is putting the leaf discs under their required light conditions to compare them on how well they do under those light conditions. The experimental group would be putting the leaf discs in the opposite light conditions that they would photosyntheses less in. The constants in the experiment would be how much baking soda solution would be used for the leaf discs to give them enough carbon dioxide to undergo photosynthesis and how long they will be under each light condition to give the leaf discs equal amount of time to photosynthesis and float in the baking soda solution. |
| Conclusion | When Basil and Zebrina leaves are exposed to a full light spectrum, basil leaves float faster. In support of this, Basil leaves had 5 leaf discs floating in the light, while overall, Zebrina didn't have any float. This evidence shows that Zebrina leaves, in comparison to basil leaves, float slower, if at all during photosynthesis, making basil leaves photosynthesize faster. Some problems that could be identified during this experiment, was the fact that the cups with the leaf discs might've been set up in a bad place so photosynthesis might not have occured at the rate it should've, jeopardizing the process. Some other question that could be asked in expansion to this is how shadow plants photosynthesize in comparison to each other, and what they do to photosynthesize. |
| Investigation Theme | POS |
| Grade Level | High School Students (Grades 9,10,11,12) |
| Teacher Name | Sarah Tschauder |
| School Name | Atchison High School |
| Session | Fall 2023 |