My aim is to determine the different effects that various pH levels have on the growth of cyanobacteria, by testing various concentrations of nitric acid in different samples of cyanobacteria of equal masses.
My hypothesis is that acid rain will greatly affect the growth of cyanobacteria. The higher the acidity level of the water, the less the cyanobacteria will grow.
I chose this topic because due to human activities, many different chemicals have been released into the air and they changed the mixture of gases in our atmosphere, hence resulting in a dramatic increase of acid rain levels. Pollution and burning of fossil fuels are the main causes for acid rain. These human activities cause the release of compounds such as nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide …show more content…
They are both aquatic as well as photosynthetic, simply meaning that they live in water and produce their own food. They are usually unicellular and reproduce by binary fission. They also often grow in colonies. The presence of phycobiliproteins, “water-soluble photosynthetic membrane proteins that covalently bind with phycobilins (photosynthetic pigments)” - McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, are responsible for the blue-green colouring. Cyanobacteria are responsible for evolution and ecological changes throughout Earth’s history. During the Proterozoic and Archaean eras, the oxygen that all life forms depend on today was produced by numerous cyanobacteria. Cyanobacteria contributed to the origin of plants, the chloroplast present in plants is a symbiotic cyanobacterium living within the plant’s cell. Cyanobacteria are heterocysts that are capable of nitrogen fixation; they convert atmospheric nitrogen into a usable form for plants such as nitrate or ammonia. Cyanobacteria are very important in today’s ecology, as many life forms would not be able to survive without
My hypothesis is that acid rain will greatly affect the growth of cyanobacteria. The higher the acidity level of the water, the less the cyanobacteria will grow.
I chose this topic because due to human activities, many different chemicals have been released into the air and they changed the mixture of gases in our atmosphere, hence resulting in a dramatic increase of acid rain levels. Pollution and burning of fossil fuels are the main causes for acid rain. These human activities cause the release of compounds such as nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide …show more content…
They are both aquatic as well as photosynthetic, simply meaning that they live in water and produce their own food. They are usually unicellular and reproduce by binary fission. They also often grow in colonies. The presence of phycobiliproteins, “water-soluble photosynthetic membrane proteins that covalently bind with phycobilins (photosynthetic pigments)” - McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, are responsible for the blue-green colouring. Cyanobacteria are responsible for evolution and ecological changes throughout Earth’s history. During the Proterozoic and Archaean eras, the oxygen that all life forms depend on today was produced by numerous cyanobacteria. Cyanobacteria contributed to the origin of plants, the chloroplast present in plants is a symbiotic cyanobacterium living within the plant’s cell. Cyanobacteria are heterocysts that are capable of nitrogen fixation; they convert atmospheric nitrogen into a usable form for plants such as nitrate or ammonia. Cyanobacteria are very important in today’s ecology, as many life forms would not be able to survive without