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Lab Report Photosynthesis

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INTRODUCTION The human population relies heavily on the oxygen in the air in order to survive every day. The oxygen that humans rely so heavily on is produced by plants in a process known as photosynthesis. Photosynthesis can be understood by simply looking at its equation. The equation for photosynthesis states that the reactants of carbon dioxide and water, with the use of solar energy, produce carbohydrates and oxygen. Photosynthesis is broken up into two types of reactions, the light reaction and the Calvin Cycle reaction. During the light reaction, pigments located inside plants absorb solar energy and convert that energy into chemical energy. The light reactions represent the portion of the photosynthesis equation where water converts …show more content…
To test this, the same test tube used in the previous experiment was wrapped completely in aluminum foil, only leaving the glass tubing above the stopper visible. The stopwatch then began and was only stopped once oxygen was consumed and the liquid dropped one millimeter. The time this change took to occur was converted to mm/10 min and was recorded as the amount of oxygen consumed. To calculate the gross photosynthesis, the amount of oxygen produced and the amount of oxygen consumed were added together to represent how far the liquid would have moved upward if there was no cellular respiration. This was recorded in mm/10 and using this number, the rate of photosynthesis was calculated by multiplying the gross photosynthesis by 6 to get mm/hr. Once all the data for white light was recorded, the data for the green light was recorded by following the same exact procedures. However, before beginning the experiment, the water in the beaker was turned to a green color by applying three drops of green dye. Once this occurred, the same procedures for the white light experiment were followed and the data was recorded in the same format as it was for the white light. Once all the data was collected, the calculations for gross photosynthesis and rate of photosynthesis were compared by creating a bar graph to determine which type of light produced more …show more content…
Humans rely on the oxygen produced by plants in order to breathe and survive every day. Also, humans and plants alike use the oxygen produced by plants in order to conduct cellular respiration. When walking outside and looking at the abundant amount of plants, most of them, such as Elodea, are often of a green color. The pigments in plants give them this color by reflecting the least effective color of light so they can absorb other colors of light that result in a higher rate of photosynthesis. The pigment that gives plants its green color is chlorophyll, which is common in most plants and reflects green light because it is the least effective wavelength for chlorophyll (Webexhibits). Therefore, the results from this experiment supports this statement as well as the hypothesis that green light will result in a lower rate of photosynthesis. The lower rate of photosynthesis for green light causes the chlorophyll to shy away from green light when conducting photosynthesis. This in return will cause the chlorophyll to absorb white light and reflect the green light because it is not being absorbed. By absorbing the white light, the chlorophyll benefits both plants and animals because the plant will be able to produce more oxygen to be consumed during cellular respiration. As this experiment shows, the more white light absorbed by the chlorophyll, the better it is for both plants and animals to

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