| Explore | We have learned in the past that plants go through the processes of photosynthesis and cellular respiration and that they are classified as producers/autotrophs. Also, we discovered this year that plants adapt to their climate. We are curious to find out more about carnivorous plants and about how global warming affects plant growth. |
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| Research Question | We want to test how the plant growth of different plants is affected by changes in temperature. We thought of this because it is a highly relevant topic with the rapid changes occurring in our global environment. |
| Predictions | Currently, we know that biodiversity is greatest at the equator, so perhaps, the plants would grow faster and larger in warmer temperatures. |
| Experimental Design | We will start by putting 1/3 of a cup of water mixed with baking soda. We will then use a whole punch to get 12 leaf disks from a spinach leaf. We will put them in different temperatures of water. Finally, we will put them under a light in order to test the effects of global warming on the rate of photosynthesis. |
| Conclusion | - What claim can we make from our experiment? The claim that we can make is that plants require a specific temperature (something not too hot and not too cold) in order to properly photosynthesize. - What are possible explanations for our results? What most likely ended up happening was that the spinach disks could not tolerate the "extremes" of temperature they were experiencing. This basically means that the spinach disks did not have the optimal conditions to photosynthesize under these temperatures because they were not within the range at which is adequate for photosynthesis to occur. - How do the data we collected and our reasoning with scientific ideas support our claim? Based off of the data, we could easily see that the temperature extremes were unsupportive of photosynthetic activity. When at a more "normal" and moderate temperature (21 degrees Celsius), the spinach disks were able to demonstrate photosynthetic activity by rising to the surface of the water. This was not the case for the two other sets of disks which interacted with the cold and warm water, thus supporting our beginning claim. - What future experiments could be done to expand on the results of this experiment? For future experiments we could easily reconduct this with much more specific temperatures, that way we have a better indication of specific ranges of values at which photosynthesis can occur. Another potential point of redesign has to do with diversifying the plant types. We only used spinach in this experiment but the data we collected from it might not necessarily correlate with other plant species. |
| Investigation Theme | POS |
| Grade Level | High School Students (Grades 9,10,11,12) |
| School Name | Mountain View High School |
| Session | Fall 2017 |