| Explore | Plants make their own food through photosynthesis. Plants grow more in the summer than in the winter. The most mass of the plant comes from carbon. |
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| Research Question | Does temperature affect the rate of photosynthesis? We were curious about why plants grow more in the summer. |
| Predictions | The cold water will represent the colder temperatures in winter so the leaf disks will not float. The room temperature will take the same amount of time to float or will take slower. The warm water will float faster. |
| Experimental Design | Add 100 mL of water to three beakers. Add a pinch of baking soda to all the beakers. Add 2 drops of diluted soap to each beaker. Put in one beaker in an ice bath until it is 4C and put one in the water bath until it is at 27 C; keep the last in room temperature water. Cut 36 leaf disks and infiltrate them in each solution. Put twelve leaf disks in each beaker and let them sink. Record how many leaf disks float and sink for fifteen minutes at one minute intervals. Do this for 2 more trials. We will test how different temperatures makes leaf disks float or sink. We will measure the temperature in degrees and how many disks float. We will record it in a table. Constants: Same amount of leaf disks, Same type of leaf, Same amount of water, Same amount of baking soda, Same amount of time in hot/cold, Same amount of soap, Same size of leaf disk |
| Conclusion | Warm temperatures make photosynthesis occur faster. Warmer temperatures have more carbon dioxide available. When we put the leaf disks in warm temperatures, the disks floated more and sooner. In the cold water the leaf disks did not float at all. Experiments could be performed with a larger range of temperatures. |
| Investigation Theme | POS |
| Grade Level | High School Students (Grades 9,10,11,12) |
| School Name | Camden High School |
| Session | Fall 2016 |
