Planting Science - Projects: Mitochondria
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Mitochondria

Project by group aljhsnagourneyfall2017

Explore We students know from our experiences outside of school that plants need light, water , and nutrients to grow . We have found out that plants taking in carbon dioxide from the air as one of their reactants, and a product of photosynthesis is oxygen. Oxygen bubbles are formed when the process of photosynthesis is occurring ,we know it’s not carbon dioxide because carbon dioxide dissolves in water but oxygen doesn’t. Some questions about plants that interest us would have to be why do plants need sunlight and water to grow if nutrients are coming from the soil.
Research Question We wanted to test what kinds of light allow photosynthesis to occur faster. We came up with our question when we observed a chart showing what light colors are absorbed by plants the fastest. Our research question fits the topic well because we learned that light is needed for photosynthesis to occur, so we then wanted to see if the rate of photosynthesis is faster or slower depending on the color of light.
Predictions The possible outcomes of our study were either that the leaf disks under the violet light would float faster than the ones under the yellow or clear light. Another outcome would be that that the disks under the yellow light would respond faster. The last outcome would be that the clear light would make the leaf disks rise faster. From previous tests we found out the rate that the lead disks would float when it is under the clear light. We wanted to see if the yellow light or violet light would make the leaf disks float faster than the clear light. We found out that the clear light responded faster but the yellow and violet light made their leaf disks float at the same rate.
Experimental Design Our plan is to observe what kinds of light allow photosynthesis to occur faster in plants, first we got three different cups of water, all with a small amount of baking soda in them, then we used a hole puncher to punch holes in spinach leaves, then we vacuumed the leaf disks we made and then put the im the water under a violet light, a yellow light, and a regular white light. next we recorded how many leaf disks were floating in each cup every two and a half minutes. The variables that will be changed are the different colors of light, and the variables that are controlled are the same amounts of water, baking soda, leaf disks, and size of cups.
Conclusion A claim that we can make from our experiment is that more leaf disks float under a yellow film rather than under a purple film when placed in the light. A possible explanation for our results can be that the color of the films can represent a certain time of day, which can either slow down, or speed up the plants process of photosynthesis/cellular respiration. To back up our claim, the data we collected shows that at 15 minutes, 7 leaf disks were not floating under the yellow film, and 6 leaf disks were not floating under the purple film. Our reasoning also backs up our claim because he yellow film has a similar resemblance to sunlight, and plants need sunlight to under go photosynthesis. A future experiment that can be done to expand the results of this experiment would be to try coloring the water the same color as the film used to see how the leaf disks would react to the color of the light, along with the color of the water.
Investigation Theme POS
Grade Level High School Students (Grades 9,10,11,12)
School Name Arthur L. Johnson High School
Session Fall 2017

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NSF_Logo.jpg This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant #2010556 and #1502892. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

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