Planting Science - Projects: The A-Team
You are here: Home / Groups / CHS Gaston Fall 2016 Project / Projects / The A-Team

The A-Team

Project by group chsgastonfall2016project

Explore Plants are green from the chlorophyll in the chloroplasts and they perform photosynthesis, and then cellular respiration to produce oxygen in the air, for us to breathe. We have discovered that plants make glucose via photosynthesis then the glucose produced from photosynthesis is used in cellular respiration to make oxygen. Question that interest us are: how do plants grow?
Research Question We want to test how different colors of light affect the rate of photosynthesis. We came up with the question by compiling 2 other questions with it and selecting the best one. The question fits what we know about the topic by telling us how different light wavelengths affect photosynthesis.
Predictions In the blue light, everything floats, and in the yellow light, very few float. This will happen, because in blue light, the plants absorb most of that light, and in the yellow light, they won't absorb as much of the light. In the red light most of the leaf disks will float because plants absorb a greater amount of red light than yellow light and a little bit less than blue light.
Experimental Design 1. Prepare three beakers with 100 mL of distilled water and a pinch of baking soda. 2. Punch holes in spinach leaves to create leaf disks. 3. Infiltrate the leaf disks to remove any oxygen. 4. Cellophane bags (red, blue, and yellow) will be placed over the beakers. 4a. One beaker will have no bag over it so it is a control group. 5.The beakers will then be placed under a desk lamp for 20 minutes 6.Record how many disks are floating and not floating each minute. We will test to see how leaf disks will float in different colors of light. We will measure and observe how many leaf disks float. We will keep the type of leaf disk, solution, and time the same. We will also record how many leaf disks will float each minute, and put the data on a chart.
Conclusion The colored light sources affected photosynthesis by affecting how many leaf disks floated. The disks in the yellow and red light had more floating, whereas the disks in the blue light had one disk floating. The red light is absorbed more by plants, but yellow is supposed to not be absorbed as much. The data supports the absorption of red light with half of the disks floating at the end of the trial. The disks in the blue light should have had more floating because plants absorb the most blue light. Future experiments that could expand on these results could be: Does the color of light affect plant growth?, How do light sources colored like the secondary colors (purple, green, orange) affect photosynthesis?
Investigation Theme POS
Grade Level High School Students (Grades 9,10,11,12)
School Name Camden High School
Session Fall 2016

Team

LogoWithTags.png

f_logo_RGB-Black_72.png 2021_Twitter_logo_-_black.png icons8-mail-30.png

ABOUT THE PROGRAM

GET INVOLVED AS A TEACHER  *   GET INVOLVED AS A SCIENTIST MENTOR

SUPPORT US!   *   TERMS OF USE

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.

Copyright © 2022 PlantingScience -- Powered by HUBzero®, a Purdue project