Photosynthesis Lab This Experiment Was Term Paper

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Total Length: 992 words ( 3 double-spaced pages)

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Materials and Methods

Procedure is found on pages 258 to 259 in Biology I: Molecular and Cells Laboratory Manual (Dalton, 2012).

Results

"1" represents the first trial, with an average time-to-surface of 282.4 seconds at a distance of seven centimeters from the light source.

"2" represents the second trial, with an average time-to-surface of 422.9 seconds at a distance of four centimeters from the light source.

Conclusion

An autotroph is an organism that uses sunlight and/or other inorganic features of its environment to create/convert the energy it needs in order to survive, such as most plants including the spinach that was used in this experiment (Kent, 2000; Dalton, 2012). A heterotroph, on the other hand, is an organism that needs to consume other organisms in order to meet its internal energy needs; humans are one obvious example of autotrophs, as is almost every member (perhaps every member) of the animal kingdom (Kent, 2000; Dalton, 2012). In autotrophs that photosynthesize, such as the spinach used in the experiment, the photosynthesis occurs in spherical cytoplasmic organelles called chloroplasts located in the cells of the plant an typically especially abundant in the leaves -- broad, flat structures meant to catch a great deal (proportionally speaking) of sunlight (Kent, 2000; Dalton, 2012). The general reaction that occurs in photosynthesis is the taking in of sunlight, which is converted into chemical energy and is used -- along with the raw materials of six molecules of carbon dioxide and twelve molecules of water to produce one molecule of sugar and six molecules of oxygen gas:

sunlight + 6CO2 + 12H2O = C6H12O6 + 6O2 (Dalton, 2012).

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This experiment worked by first voiding all of the air pockets in the leaf segments and filling them with sodium bicarbonate, which will be utilized by the plant in photosynthesis and will lead to the production of sugars and oxygen gas -- gas that will fill the voids in the air pockets left by the sodium bicarbonate as it is reacted and make the leaf segments buoyant in their solution again. When the leaf segments have become buoyant enough to rise to the top of the solution, enough oxygen has been produced by photosynthesis to yield this observable result (Dalton, 2012). The overall results of the experiment clearly show that the hypothesis was incorrect, as moving the spinach leaf segments closer to the light source did not only fail to increase the rate of photosynthesis, but actually appeared to significantly decrease the rate of this reaction. The controls on this experiment were not stringent enough to make this statement with true certainty, however; it is possible that increased heat slowed the reactions or affected the density of the solution. Further experimentation with more controlled temperatures is called for......

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