The Effect Of Temperature On Beetroot Membranes

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The effect of temperature on the beetroot membranes

Aim of the research: The aim of this investigation is to determine what kind of effect will the increasing temperature have on the plasma membrane of a beetroot cell.

Introduction

The beetroot contains a red pigment that is kept in the cells by the membranes. If the membranes are damaged, the pigment “betalain” will leek out.

The amount of pigment that leeks out can be assessed, as “betalain” will colour any water that surrounds the cell. If the water with the beetroot slices is heated at different temperatures, then will the temperature have any affect on the colour of the solution?

Hypothesis

I think that more red pigment will be released as the temperature increases.

When the beetroots slices in the water are heated, the high temperature will provide more kinetic energy.

The increase in energy will make the molecules inside the beetroots slices to move faster. The fast movement will probably cause damage and break the cell membrane allowing the red pigment to vanish out of the cells.

Temperature (C°) Color of beetroot waters Color intensity(arbitrary units)

0 Faint crème color 0.02

20 Darker crème color 0.02

40 Pink with a red mix 0.06

60 dark red 1.00

80 Orange red .65

100 Yellow/orange .14

Table 1: Observations of the colours of beetroot waters from my data (group 5)

Temperature(C° ± 5.0 C°) Group 1 Group 2 Group 3 Group 4 Group 5 Group 6 Group 7 Mean SD

0 0,03 0,01 0,13 0,05 0,02 0,00 0,01 0,04 0,04

20 0,04 0,01 0,06 0,00 0,02 0,01 0,00 0,02 0,02

40 0,09 0,05 0,06 0,15 0,06 0,00 0,03 0,06 0,04

60 1,45 0,56 0,90 0,84 1,00 0,05 0,59 0,77 0,40

80 1,45 0,62 2,00 0,65 0,65 0,74 0,87 1,00 0,49

100...

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... some groups had got different leakage of the pigment in the test tubes with water. It could me improved by taking extra care when cutting the beetroot, however using a different kind of equipment instead of a knife should make the cutting more accurate.

The water baths were well controlled, and the thermometers helped to control the desired temperatures. the water baths I think were accurate enough but having two thermometers in each bath maybe would have helped to be hold the temperature readings more accurate.

We were not given any instructions either to shake or not to shake the test tubes with the coloured solutions before inserting them in the spectrophotometer to read the absorbance. By shaking each test tube a certain number of times before putting it in the spectrophotometer could have improved the accuracy of the of absorbance of the solutions.

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