How Light Intensity Affects the Photosynthesis of a Canadian Water Weed

How Light Intensity Affects the Photosynthesis of a Canadian Water Weed

Photosynthesis happens in all types of plants, whether on land or in

the water. Photosynthesis is a process that plants use every minute in

order to survive. They create the food that they need from Carbon

Dioxide and Water. Here is the full, balanced chemical equation;

[IMAGE]Carbon Dioxide + Water Oxygen + Glucose

CHLOROPHYLL

Or the chemical equation:

[IMAGE]6CO2 + 6H2O 6O2 + C6H12O6

With these equations, we are going to see that at what rates

photosynthesis happens in this Elodea.

We intend to use bulbs, to provide the ‘sunlight’ for our Elodea, if

we use any kind of filter, then we would use a blue filter, red filter

and yellow. We would not use the green filter, as that would turn the

light green. If we turn the light green then the green chlorophyll

would reflect the light. We would also have to control the temperature

in the beaker full of Elodea, as if the temperature increased too much

it would either denature the enzymes, ruining the experiment, or it

would make the photosynthesis rates increase massively. To prevent the

temperature from changing, one would place a beaker of water in

between the light bulb and the beaker of Elodea, so that the light

would only be able to alter the temperature of the beaker full of

water and not the Elodea one. To make this experiment fair, then you

should turn off the room’s lights, so that the plant only gets light

from our bulb. To stop the plant from getting unnatural Carbon

Dioxide, we must put sodium hydrocarbonate in the beaker to absorb it.

The reason why we did not take only one reason for each distance could

have resulted in me recording an anomaly. So we took

We took some healthy looking Elodea from the large basin and put it in