Why Do Leaf Disks Produce Oxygen The Fastest

The hypothesis proposed that if the leaf disks were put in solutions that are at different temperatures, then the leaf disks in the warmest solution would produce oxygen the fastest. The data revealed that there is great support for this hypothesis. The data showed that the solution with all ten of the leaf disks floating in the least amount of time was the 38°C solution which was the warmest. In contrast the solution that had the least amount of leaf disks, about seven and a half leaf disks, was the 7°C solution which was the coolest. The control solution had the second most leaf disks, on average, floating at 20 minutes. There was one outlier in the second trial of the 23°C solution. It only had five leaf disks floating at the end of 20 minutes which was unexpected because the 7°C solution had about seven and a half leaf disks floating at the end of 20 minutes.

These enzymes catalyze the light-independent reactions (Rate of photosynthesis: limiting factors). As the enzymes approach approach their optimum temperature, they begin to work faster and therefore increase the rate of photosynthesis (Photosynthesis). Some of the factors that could have affected the results of this lab and caused the outlier were the temperature of the solutions not being maintained throughout the entire duration of the experiment and also not properly taking all of the gases out of the mesophyll cells and replacing it with the baking soda solution. Future research can include performing this experiment on different types of plants that do photosynthesis to add to the existing data of this