Photosynthesis :: essays research papers

Photosynthesis 1. Would you illuminate your house plants with a green light bulb? Why or why not? It would not be a wise choice to put a plant under a green light bulb. The reason for this is that due to the fact that the leaves are green they reflect green light. This shining green light onto the flowers will cause photosynthesis to stop. Since the light is being reflectd, the cells do not get any light. With out light they cannot carry out the everyday occurance of photosyntesis. If the choice was mine, I would place them into violet light, because almost none of it would be reflected. 2. Explain the statement: "Without autotrophic organisms, heterotrophic lofe would cease to exist." Without autotrophic organisms heterotrophic organisms would not be able to survive for two asic reasons. One is the fact that autotrophic organisms create most of the oxygen that heterotrophs breath. Whithout them, heterotrophs which need oxygen to survive would not live very long. The second reason is that autotrophs are the lowest food on the food chart. Without them many heterotrops would die from starvation. 3. Why did you put your syringes containing leaf material in the dark prior to illumination? The reason this was done was to make sure as little oxygen as possible was contained in the leaf material. This coused the experimrnt to run properly. If the leaf material was not placed in the dark, the dark reaction would not have occured using up all the oxygen. If there was still oxygen in the leaf material, the data collected would have been off. The reason for this is that the leaves would have risen to the top of the liqiud quicker, because they would not have had to make the totql amount of oxygen. 4. State you hypothesis for the directed experiment. The leaves in the sodium bicarbonate will rise to the top of the syringes faster than the ones in the distilled water will.