Info
| Explore | Plants make their food from the process of photosynthesis, plants gather nutrients from the soil, plants get their mass from CO2 |
|---|---|
| Research Question | How do different lights affect the rate of photosynthesis? We thought of many different questions and by process of elimination and voting, we came to a conclusion to choose a topic that we were all interested in. We know that photosynthesis uses sunlight to produce sugars, therefore we were... |
| Predictions | The rate of production of glucose in plants could increase, decrease, or remain the same. The different light intensities that are reflected on the plant could be absorbed into the plant faster, therefore increasing the rate of photosynthesis. |
| Experimental Design | Our plan consists of placing 12 spinach disks in the cup of the baking soda solution under a blue and green light. We will keep them under the light for 15 minutes and record how many disks float every minute. Our constant consists of putting 12 spinach disks in distilled water under a normal... |
| Conclusion | We concluded that more disks floated in the blue light than the green light. We believe that the spinach disks floated in the blue light because the disks absorb the blue light waves and the spinach under the green light reflected the green light waves instead of absorbing them. For future... |
| About this Project |
Updates
Thank you for all of your helpful input and for taking time out of your busy schedule to mentor us. We really appreciate you being so helpful in helping photosynthesis. You helped us know which questions to ask and how to answer them.
Dear Ms. Hill,
Thank you for your kind and helpful input on our experiments. Also for taking time out of your day to mentor our group. Thank you for your kind words and joyful enthusiastic responses. Our group greatly appreciated your collaboration with us.
Hello ladies,
It has been my pleasure to know you and I really hope that I have helped you understand a bit more on photosynthesis :)
Maybe I'll see you at botanical conferences in the future!
All the best,
Kathryn.
Thank you for helping us these past few weeks and especially on our official PlantingScience experiment. It has been a great learning experience to have someone as helpful as you mentor us! I hope you have a great day and, once again, thank you for taking the time to assist us these past few weeks.
Thank you so much for your input and helping us learn from our experiment. It was great working with you and having a professional help further our thinking.
Hi KatieK, KatieY, Sophia and Ainsley,
Are these the results that you described to me on Nov 14? If so, I'd say that you described them to me well and I understood what your results were, good work.
K.
These are the results from the lab we did on Tuesday.
Hi ladies,
Great conclusions. Chlorophyll can use energy from blue light but not green (for some reason that I don't know!). Take a look at the second picture on this site: http://biologicalexceptions.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/the-colors-of-alien-plants.html (don't worry about chlorophyll a and b, just look at the figure as a whole)
This image shows what coloured lights chlorophyll absorbs, your table shows that white light gives energy to the highest number of discs enabling them to produce oxygen. The white light has colours that are absorbed by chlorophyll, mainly the red and blue lights, suggesting that it gives the chlorophyll a bit more energy.
You control results look great too, just what we'd expect!
Your closed chamber experiment sounds like you demonstrated both photosynthesis and respiration, so good work. It also sounds like your error wasn't too detrimental to the experiment which is great. These things happen, with my work, I often have problems and a quick project will take probably a year from planning to publishing because of editing and amending experiments due to problems and edits of final manuscripts.
Good job and I look forward to hearing from you all again soon,
Kat :)
Our group placed spinach leaves in an enclosed chamber that was exposed to sunlight for 10 minutes. We measured the amount of oxygen and carbon dioxide before and after we started the 10 minutes. We also covered the chamber and measured the oxygen and carbon dioxide levels before and after the 10 minutes. In dark, oxygen levels decreased and carbon dioxide increased. In light. we had an error but both oxygen and carbon dioxide increased.
Our group placed spinach leaves in an enclosed chamber that was exposed to sunlight for 10 minutes. We measured the amount of oxygen and carbon dioxide before and after we started the 10 minutes. We also covered the chamber and measured the oxygen and carbon dioxide levels before and after the 10 minutes. In dark, oxygen levels decreased and carbon dioxide increased. In light. we had an error but both oxygen and carbon dioxide increased.
We concluded that more disks floated in the blue light than the green light. We believe that the spinach disks floated in the blue light because the disks absorb the blue light waves and the spinach under the green light reflected the green light waves instead of absorbing them. For future experiments, I would consider using colored lights that chlorophyll more often absorbs then reflects, to test how fast each color could affect the rate of photosynthesis.
Hey hey hey project 1-ers!
I'm glad that you chose that question, are you planning to shine different colours of light onto the leaves in their baking soda baths? What is your hypothesis? As you are thinking about the rate of photosynthesis you could frame it in terms of light "a" generates faster rates of photosynthesis than light "b".
Keep in mind that there are two types of chlorophyll, creatively named chlorophyll a and chlorophyll b, they respond slightly differently to colours in the light spectrum.
I'd also be interested to see what colour the leaves are when you shine different light colours on them because leaves look green to us as they reflect green light.
Looking forward to hearing about what you come up with,
Kat :)
Our testable question is going to be: How do different lights affect the rate of photosynthesis?
Some questions that we are thinking of exploring are: How do different light colors affect photosynthesis? When do plants begin carrying out photosynthesis? How is photosynthesis measured?
Hi all,
These are some great questions and well worth investigation. KatieK, you said that you like physics so I can see why the light question would interest you. That one would delve into the visible light spectrum and the behaviour of light in the chloroplast.
The second question could be more refined, do you mean at what point during the day do plants begin to photosynthesise? If so, you would have to consider water availability as well as light so it may be a little tricky...
The third question is either more mathematical or instrument based. I know you guys love maths which is awesome so this one might be a good one to think about too. You would probably want to look at sugar and/or oxygen production per CO2 absorbed.
I look forward to hearing which one you go with!
Kat :)
Today in class, we did a lab investigating photosynthesis by observing spinach leaf discs placed in liquids with varying levels of carbon dioxide. We observed that when a leaf was in a syringe with only a liquid (distilled water, distilled water that we had blown bubbles in for 90 seconds, or a solution of baking soda and distilled water) and no gas, the leaf discs would sink. When we put the leaf discs in a cup half full with their liquid solution and directly beneath light, the rate at which the leaf discs began to float was the rate of photosynthesis. We were able to infer this because we knew that the more oxygen there was in the solution, the more leaf discs would float. The oxygen was produced by the leaf discs absorbing the light energy, carbon dioxide, and water in their environment. The discs floating was evidence that photosynthesis was occurring within the leaves. Our results concluded that baking soda solution had the most carbon dioxide, followed by the “breath water”, and, lastly, the distilled water.
Hi guys,
It sounds like you're all over it! The only thing that I would tweak in your description is that oxygen is a product of photosynthesis and escapes the leaf through stomata, this creates oxygen bubbles in the water.
Nice work :)
Kat.
Hey hey hey everyone!
My name is Kathryn and I love hanging out with my awesome husband and cat (Matt and Cinnabun respectively, yeah, I love Adventure Time). I have two siblings too who are awesome people. My fave things to learn about are politics, party planning and evolution.
I live in Adelaide, Australia and work at a University campus that borders the Torrens River that is beautiful and the city centre which I quite enjoy for the purpose of unnecessary shopping trips...
I see that you guys aren't into biology and that's cool; I hope that I can help you with understanding what you're doing and by Thanksgiving the subject might move up your rankings!
Looking forward to getting to know you guys better :)
Kat.
Hi, my name is Sophia and I enjoy playing soccer and tennis. One of my favorite soccer players is Wayne Rooney. I have two brothers that are twins and very annoying. My favorite food is tacos. My favorite subjects are math and french. I like and enjoy science and experiments, but it is a class I struggle with. My least favorite subject is theology.