Spinach Lab

The purpose of this lab was to test the rate of photosynthesis in cut-out circles of spinach leaves in a solution with only water and a solution with water and carbon dioxide. The hypothesis made for this experiment was that the circles of spinach leaf that were placed in the solution with the carbon dioxide would float to the top more quickly than the circles of spinach leaf that were placed in just water. To test this hypothesis, twenty circles were cut with a hole punch from a spinach leaf in order to have a plant to perform the photosynthesis. Considering plants have oxygen running through their veins, the oxygen had to be taken out of the spinach circles before completing the experiment. To do that, the spinach circles were put into a syringe along with 5 mL of the solution in which they were going to be submerged.

It is important that the leaves be removed of all oxygen because then, photosynthesis would not be as obvious. Since oxygen is a product of photosynthesis, and photosynthesis did occur, the leaves would start to float. After the oxygen was removed from the leaf circles, they were emptied into a bigger cup of either the water solution or the carbon dioxide and water solution. These solutions were then placed under a lamp of some kind to provide a light source to allow photosynthesis to occur, since light is a reactant. The leaf circles were then observed every one minute for about fifteen minutes to judge the rate of photosynthesis. According to the group data, the hypothesis was proven correct; the leaf circles in the carbon dioxide solution surfaced more quickly than the leaf circles in the water did. This occurred because carbon dioxide is a reactant in photosynthesis, therefore the more it is present the more successful the reaction is going to