| Explore | Plants are green and we need them in order to survive. They are also living organisms we see in our daily lives and we don't think much of them very often. In school, we discovered that the reasons plants are green is because of photosynthesis and an organelle called the chloroplast and it has a pigment called the chlorophyll so it makes plants green. We also discovered that photosynthesis makes glucose and releases oxygen and cellular respiration needs glucose and oxygen to make energy and to finally grow. |
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| Research Question | How do plants in salt water environment vs regular water environment affect the cellular respiration rate process ? We came up with our question by looking at different topics and we created a question. This fits the topic of our project because we want to know how the environment of a plant affects its rate. |
| Predictions | There are many outcomes for this experiment. Either the salt water environment can have a greater cellular rate or a lower cellular rate, or the regular water environment can have a greater cellular rate or a lower one. I think the regular water environment plant will grow more because in salt water environment the temperature is hotter so i think the leaf disks will undergo cellular respiration faster. |
| Experimental Design | The independent variable is the color lamp they are under because of the different temperatures they release. The dependent variable is the time in minutes of when the leaf disks are floating. The control variables would be how long both plants are kept under their environment lamps, the same amount of leaf disks, the amount of water put in the cups . The data can be recorded by quantitative and qualitative observations such as how many leaf disks are floating and you write down how many are floating in a chart. Materials A regular heat lamp (65-75) A red heat lamp (80-85) degrees 2 container cups 2 paint brushes Regular water/ sink water 2 Syringes Straws Beakers Hole punchers soap Procedure Grab your cups and label them with salt water environment and the other with regular water environment. Then put the same amount of water in both cups (1/2th of the cup size) So get your 2 cups and make your solution (water and a drop of soap) in each cup.) You can get your straws and blow into the solution for 60 seconds in both cups so it can have carbon dioxide. Now get your hole puncher and your spinach and get leaf disks by punching out 20 disks with a hole puncher. Once you have your leaf disks grab your 2 syringe and your paint brushes and put your disks in your syringes(for each syringe, 10 disks go in). Then you can fill your syringe ⅓ of it with the solution you made. After, you will cover the tip of it with your finger and pull back the plunger and do it repeated amount of time until your leaf disks are no longer floating and that means there are no more gases left. You can place your leaf disk in the solution and put both of the cups under their environment lamp. Now you can record the amount of leaf disks that float every 3 minutes and write down the data in charts. |
| Conclusion | From the evidence that we got we can conclude that with either environment it doesn't affect the rate of cellular respiration but towards the end of the experiment the regular water experiment cups cellular respiration went faster. |
| Investigation Theme | POS |
| Grade Level | High School Students (Grades 9,10,11,12) |
| School Name | Paramount High School West Campus |
| Session | Fall 2016 |
