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Bicarbonate Soda Affect The Rate Of Photosynthesis Essay

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The aim of this experiment was to investigate the effect of different bicarbonate soda concentrations in water on the amount of oxygen produced by submerged leaves as a by-product of photosynthesis. It was hypothesised that the leaf which was submerged in the water sample with the highest concentration of bicarbonate soda would produce the greatest amount of oxygen, due to the higher levels of, eventually, CO2 it was exposed to. The results show that the amount of oxygen produced by the leaves increases as the bicarbonate soda concentrations increases. In the results it is evident that the leaves which were exposed to higher amounts of bicarbonate soda produced the most oxygen on average and through all trials. This adheres to the theory …show more content…

This is shown as the oxygen produced increases by 3.57mL from 0g/L to10g/L and also 3.57mL to 20g/L and then it increases by only 1.17mL from 20g/L to 30g/L. This means that the rate of photosynthesising could be affected by certain limiting factors. The two most prominent limiting factors for photosynthesis are light intensity, CO2 concentrations and temperature. The temperature could be limiting the process by being too low and therefore the enzymes needed for the process don’t have enough energy to complete the reaction to maximum levels. It could also be the intensity of the light, if there aren’t enough light photons falling on the leaf, the rate of photosynthesis decreases and eventually plateaus. All of these relationships, trends and patterns are also seen in similar experiments and this all follows the theory stated in the …show more content…

This variable wasn’t controlled or measured, so there is a possibility that this affected the experiment. This can cause the enzymes involved in the chemical reaction of photosynthesis to have less or more kinetic energy and therefore lead to a slower or faster rate of photosynthesis. Ultimately leading to a biased result in some trials, as the temperature could have been the limiting factor in some. An improvement for this would be to keep the temperature constant during all duration of all trials. This could be done by placing the experiment in a chamber with the optimum temperature for enzymes;

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