Photosynthesis Lab

Background Information: Over time the study of plants has revolutionized technology, allowing scientists to engineer solar panels, create cures and medicines, and even bring high definition television to the homes of millions. The examination of plants is interesting and useful, indeed, and this usefulness is definitely a factor in why the Photosynthesis Lab experiment was preformed. Purpose of Study: The purpose of this study was to examine photosynthesis in plants and determine what variations of light is the most effective and most energy providing for the plants. In this experiment leaves were hole-punched and vacuumed then in water under a light with different colored filters to track its rate of photosynthesis.

Hypothesis: It was

Remove the plug and dump out the leaf disks while still keeping the syringe under water. Avoid letting the disk contact the air because this could undo the effects of the vacuum. Once the leaf disks are out of the syringe and into the beaker remove the syringe and discard it. Next retrieve the lamp. Place the lamp on a flat surface with in the distance of an electrical outlet. Plug the lamp into the electrical outlet, but make sure the cord is safely out of the way. Place the beaker under the lamp and place one of the three filters over the beaker. Make a chart and record the number of disks that float over an hour’s time. Record the time in an interval of ten minutes. Once the experiment has been completed repeat the whole experiment with each of the other conditions of

In fact, the disks that were under the green filter ended up thriving. This may have been because the filter was not absorbing all light except green. When the filter paper was placed over my hand I could still see various hues of different colors through the paper easily. Although I had not even fathomed that this would cause complications in the experiment at the time, now that I have seen the results of green, where most of the disks were able to achieve photosynthesis, I know that other spectrums of light were the cause of this. Normally chlorophyll should not have been able to photosynthesize because chlorophyll reflects that spectrum of light, thus causing it itself to have a green color. One thing I did notice however was that my results that were conducted as an individual were closest to my hypothesis however it was still disproven. In the “Effectiveness of Photosynthesis in Different Spectrums of Light” chart for “Photosynthesis in Green Light” my results (Sec.2 Group 2) for the majority of the time the disks did not photosynthesize, but when they did only a total of three out of 2 out of 25 disks were able to. Although my prediction said that they would not be able to at all, I couldn’t help but notice that my results relatively were in