Rate of Photosynthesis and Seed Germination
There are 4 different matters that affect the rate of photosynthesis. These matters are, light intensity, temperature, carbon dioxide, water and the color of light. In this lab, the color of light is mostly investigated. Since the photosynthesis takes place in the chloroplast that has chlorophylls, the result of photosynthesis is highly affected by the intensity of light and also the color of light.
Our hypothesis was, if several kidney bean seeds are placed on a dish then, the dish that observes the blue light the most will grow the most and the dish that observes the yellow light the most will grow the least because of the wavelength of light. I conducted this lab simply by locating few kidney beans onto 5 different dishes which each would get different colors of light focused. Then, I would measure the length of the plants growing per day to observe if my hypothesis was correct.
Our research question was "Would the rate of photosynthesis and seed germination get effected if the kidney beans are placed in different dishes that each would observe different colors of light?" As a group, we chose this question as our research question because we wanted to relate this to current issue happening around scientific society. Currently, many scientists are arguing that due to super smog and fine dusts are affecting the rate of seed germination and photosynthesis in China and Korea. Our group really wanted to know if there is any other way to increase the rate of photosynthesis so that farmers can actively grow these plants well again through these super smogs and fine dusts.
In conclusion, we have found that plant that receives blue light will grow the most in short amount of time. This was due to the amount of light absorption of plants. Therefore, our group believed that in order for farmers to grow their plants well through super smog and fine dusts, they should use blue lights so that plants can photosynthesis and germinate well.
According to my experiments, the plant that received blue light grew the most while plant that received yellow light grew the least. Our group had made total of 6 graphs to support this result. According to our graph, the highest average recorded was 14.773, which was shown in the plant that received the blue light. The lowest average on the 11th day recorded was 6.706, which was observed from plant that received yellow light.
To compare all the highest averages of all 5 different results, we have created final graph. As our graph shows, it is very clear to observe that plant that observed blue light grew the most and the yellow light grew the least with very delicate difference.
Lastly, to see if our plants actually grew significantly, our group ran 2 T-Test data sets. Just to clarify what T-Test and P-Value is, I would like to explain little bit about what T-Test and P-Value tells us. T-Test is normally used to compare two different averages and see if our result is the actual growth of the plants and the actual result that it should be shown, rather than it was just a coincidence.
P-value is the probability of obtaining a test statistics to see if the result of our result was very significant.
We first have compared 2 datas, the "blue" and "green". The result of the "blue" and "green" gave us the P-Value of 0.0004, which in other words our data is extremely statistically significant.
In our second graph, we have compared another 2 data sets, the plant that showed the tallest growth and the third tallest growth, "blue" with "transparent". The result of "blue" with "transparent" gave us the P-value of less than 0.0001 which means, it is also incredibly statistically significant.
Our hypothesis towards our research question "Would the rate of photosynthesis and seed germination get effected if the kidney beans are placed in different dishes that each would observe different colors of light?" was "If several kidney beans seeds are placed on a dish then, the dish that observes the blue light will grow the most however, the dish that observes the yellow light will grow the least because of the wavelengths. " In order to prove that our hypothesis was correct, we have designed our own experiment.
Since we are humans, we are not perfect. Therefore, as our group was doing the experiment, we realized that our experiment was not fair. Since our experiment was not fair and perfect, we realized that we also needed to improve some parts of our experiment. In our conclusion, we would write about errors that we have made and promote solutions or improvements which could improve our result or our experiment.
We have had made following errors:
- Did not give water in the same time
- Did not give same amount of water
- My brother dropped one plant while the experiment was taking place
- Did not measure plants in same time
- Plants did not grow in same places
Our group thinks that we have made these errors because we did not measure exact time when we gave water. We tried our best to give water in same time and in same amount,however, we could not get our time and amount of water 100 percent correct in every time that we gave water to these plants. I believe that we cannot get all these elements very accurately correct unless we are very precise of everything. Also, as the experiment was going on, my brother accidentally knocked down part of our experiment which gave us the result of having only 11 trials instead of 15 in total. Lastly, our group has also failed to measure the plant growth in same time and as well, we did not grow plants in the same places. We think we failed to do so because we did not keep time exactly every time that we have measured our plants. Adding on, we believe that we did not 100 % failed to grow plants in the same places however, we think that we have failed to give same amount of light towards the plants. This was due to the movement of sun because the sun eventually moves throughout the day, which means that we cannot distinguish the amount of light given to the plants.
As our final result, we realized that the plant that receives the blue light grows the most and yellow light grows the least. We also have evidence to back up our result provided from Heejjung's paper written on December 11th, 2010. Her research paper stated that plant that absorbs blue light will grow the most and yellow light will grow the least due to amount of light absorbed as the following graph is showing:
Acknowledgements
- Thank you to Mrs. Johanson and Ms. Lee for giving us opportunity to open science fair and giving us help towards all factors of the science fair.
- Thank you to Stephanie's mom for providing idea to make t-test data.
Bibliography
- Heejjung. "Effect of Colour of Light on the Rate of Photosynthesis." Effect of Colour of Light on the Rate of Photosynthesis. Slideshare, 2 Dec. 2011. Web. 31 Mar. 2014.
- "Photosynthesis." Photosynthesis. UIC Edu, n.d. Web. 30 Mar. 2014. <http://www.uic.edu/classes/bios/bios100/lectures/ps01.htm>
- http://www.graphpad.com/
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