Effect Of Photosynthesis In Spinach

This experiment is set up the study the effect of different sodium bicarbonate concentrations on the rate of photosynthesis in spinach (Spinacia oleracea). Photosynthesis is the process by which plants and other photoautotrophs synthesize organic compounds from carbon dioxide (Faculty of Science and Horticulture, 2018). Photosynthesis takes place in the chloroplast of a plant cell, where sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide are used in a reaction to produce oxygen and sugar (Reese 2017). In the photosynthesis reaction carbon dioxide is reduced to make sugar and water is oxidized to make oxygen. In this experiment oxygen production is being used to measure the rate of photosynthesis. This is done by removing the air from the leaf discs and submerging

Fifteen leaf discs were placed in a syringe with water and using the syringe the air was vacuumed out of the leaf discs. The discs were then transferred to a plastic cup with distilled water were the discs sunk to the bottom of the plastic cup. Then the discs were timed on how long it took for half of the fifteen discs to float to the surface. For the treatment groups different concentrations of sodium bicarbonate were added to the distilled water to change the conditions for the leaf discs. After recording the rates of photosynthesis, the mean was calculated by taking the rates measured and adding them together, then dividing by the number of replicants to find the average between them all. To calculate variance, you take the sum of the individual recordings minus the mean and then squared, divided by the total number of replicants minus one. To find standard deviation you take standard deviation and square root it. The 95% confidence interval is found by taking the mean plus/minus standard deviation divided by the square root of the total number of

The variation of the concentration of sodium bicarbonate will have an effect on the rate of photosynthesis of spinach (Spinacia oleracea). In this experiment it was ultimately found that the 95% confidence interval bars of treatment group 1 and treatment group 2 overlap, however none of the treatment groups overlap with each other or the control. This shows that there is a difference in the rate of photosynthesis when exposed to increasing amounts of sodium bicarbonate. This leads us to reject the null hypothesis and provides support for the alternative hypothesis. The variation of the concentration of sodium bicarbonate will have an effect on the rate of photosynthesis of spinach (Spinacia oleracea). As the amount of sodium bicarbonate increased the rate of photosynthesis also increased, this is because bicarbonate provides carbon dioxide (CO2) for the photosynthetic reaction which was also found in the experiment: An Assay Utilizing Leaf Disks (Guy, 1985). When completing this experiment there was one mane issue with our experiment that might have affected the results. The main issue that was faced was when the leaf disks were being exposed to the higher percentages of sodium bicarbonate while they were being vacuumed in the syringe. We found that the sodium bicarbonate was reacting with the leaf disks before they were placed