Photosynthesis Report

Great Essays
Over the past year in 2016, the highest average temperature recorded on Earth was experienced 1. Many researchers believe this to be partially because of greenhouse gasses, including carbon dioxide 2. However, carbon dioxide is essential for the photosynthesis of plants, allowing plants to be successful autotrophs by using carbon dioxide, water, and energy from the sun to produce glucose and oxygen. One of the main sources of photosynthesis in a plant is in the leaves. When leaves decompose they release the carbon dioxide used in photosynthesis. It is important to figure out how much carbon dioxide is emitted from leaf decomposition in order for people to further limit the amount of carbon dioxide being trapped within the atmosphere.
A previous
…show more content…
The best candidate for this outcome was strontium nitrate. Two airtight plastic containers were filled with samples of the same species of leaves. Two 50-mL beakers were filled with 25-mL of sodium hydroxide both were placed into each container. One of the containers was drizzled with a 4-mL of deionized water while the other was drizzled with an equal part of 20% fertilizer solution. The container was sealed airtight and incubated for a week. Throughout the incubation period the resulting equation transpired:
CO2 (g) + 2NaOH (aq) → Na2CO3 (aq) + H2O (l) Once the incubation period was finished, the beakers were obtained and the solution was titrated to find the amount of sodium hydroxide remaining in each of the samples. In order to find this amount and back titration was performed with 1.0209 M hydrochloric acid. The same reaction was used again to determine the amount of carbon dioxide emitted:
2NaOH (aq) + CO2 (g) → Na2CO3 (aq) + H2O (l) Sodium carbonate may react with the hydrochloric acid during the back titration process causing us to remove the compound with the precipitation of the carbonate ions with strontium nitrate, which allowed for hydroxide to still be present. This cause the following
…show more content…
However, originally I expected a more significance in the margins, some of the data, including my own recorded, which is highlighted in table 2, showed the leaf samples without fertilizer had a higher grams of leaves for each day. This suggests that the recorded data from this specific study was not indicative of the overall study.
The outcome may be due to the species of leaves I used, cherry leaves, which may have altered the results due to their own specific chemical make up. Different species of leaves tend to have varying amounts of decomposition. Any microorganisms feeding off of the decay of leaves may have been another possible factor, which would have altered the titration process. Most of the studies read over used as references also incubated their leaf decay for longer amounts of time, sometimes over a month of decay 4,5,6. This incubation period may have been a major contributing factor to the data. Other studies have found that high amounts of carbon dioxide present during leaf decomposition have affected leaf composition

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    This lab makes use of the reaction excess powdered calcium carbonate and different concentrations limiting hydrochloric acid in order to determine the effect of changing concentration on the rate of the reaction. Students will carry out 3 trials of 5 experiments each trial. The five different experiments are for the various concentrations of hydrochloric acid (0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1.0 mol/L). First measure out approximately 2 grams of powdered calcium carbonate using a weighing boat and analytical balance. Then, measure out 30 mL of 0.2 M hydrochloric acid into a volumetric flask.…

    • 198 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Acid Rain Lab

    • 1545 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Group A, the control was the healthiest of the three groups, however group C grew to be the overall highest 17.75 cm. This occurrence could be due to the plastic bags are plants replaced in. Group A showed signs that the plastic bags limited plant growth. The stem of the plants in group A where folded over top of themselves like a ribbon. This leads me to believe that the plastic bags would’ve been removed, group A would have outperformed group C in…

    • 1545 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Photosynthesis is a plant’s mechanism of converting sunlight and CO2 into energy in the form of organic material (Hohmann-Marriott and Blankenship 2011). Plant respiration is the process of using energy and oxygen to produce CO2 (Gonzalez-Meler et al. 2004). Almost all plants reproduce and respire, therefore it is important to know what factors could affect the rate of photosynthesis and respiration to better understand how plants function. Some research has shown that elevated CO2 concentrations may determine plant productivity by affecting plant physiological processes, and ecosystem structure and functions such as photosynthesis ( Xu et al. 1987).…

    • 1144 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Introduction Photosynthesis is the process in which light energy is converted into chemical energy in plants and other organisms (Reece, 2011). Photosynthesis is a redox reaction where carbon dioxide is reduced to sugar (glucose) and water is oxidized to oxygen (Reece, 2011). The reaction that occurs during photosynthesis is shown through the empirical equation CO2 + H2O → (CH2O)N + O2 (Stegenga, 2015). Photosynthesis occurs in the chloroplasts of plant cells, specifically within the thylakoid and the stroma (Stegenga, 2015).…

    • 1663 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Determining The Process of Photosynthesis And Cellular Respiration Using Elodea and Yeast Introduction Photosynthesis is an essential process to life on earth, in which plants and other organisms use sunlight to create food from oxygen, and carbon dioxide. Cellular respiration is when energy in food is released and converted to ATP, which is then used as chemical energy to complete tasks within a cell. This process usually requires oxygen and releases carbon dioxide. Photosynthesis and cellular respiration are similar in some areas and different in others. The purpose of both of the process is to produce energy, but they have different ways of achieving this goal.…

    • 1180 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Elizabeth Lee James Poland CHEM 104A 21 September 2014 Discussion and Conclusion of Experiment #4: States of Matter Sleuth Discussion The results of this experiment enabled the experimenter to determine the identity of an unknown salt (#3) using ion-exchange chromatography by analyzing the inorganic salts of the unknown salt, which can be examined by acid-base titration using ion-exchange resin. The stationary phase is made up of acid groups which will attach to the resin, which is then rinsed down the column with water. The mobile phase contains the inorganic salt dissolved in a solvent, which is then added to the column. As it goes down the column, an exchange of H+ ions and cations occur. The solution collected at the bottom of the column contains the acid form of the inorganic salt.…

    • 539 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    For the second single replacement reaction experiment, zinc metal is place in a 2mL of hydrochloric acid solution; during this reaction, bubbles are forming inside the test tube which indicates the formation of gas. After the reaction, the HCl solution appears to still have bubbles in its presence and the zinc metal is fizzing. In this reaction, the zinc reacts with the hydrochloric acid to form zinc chloride and hydrogen gas (equation 10). For the first double replacement reaction, barium nitrate Ba(NO3)2 is combined with sodium hydroxide NaOH. During the reaction, the mixture is cloudy and white while there are small particles of precipitation in the solution of the test tube.…

    • 444 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Premade Vial Leaves

    • 640 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Methods: To begin, our group acquired three premade vials of .1ml mammal blood with coagulant. We then labeled the vials numbers one, two, and three. In vial number one we added 1 ml of Stock 300 mM NaCl, and no distilled water. This resulted in a NaCl concentration of 1.8 percent.…

    • 640 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The raw data was not showing that the number of leaves in each jar did not gradually increase. Therefore, the amount of nutrient-enriched that presently show the averages of each group, and it did steadily increase with the amount of nutrient. However, the nutrient is going from an average of 1.600 leaves to 0.108 leaves as nutrient-enriched, meaning the nutrient did positively affect how the duckweed grew. Moreover, tells us that our hypothesis was supported, as we stated that the enriched nutrient would affect the growth rate of the duckweed. This may be because of the added water river and the enriched.…

    • 936 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Elodea And Photosynthesis

    • 391 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Photosynthesis is the process by which plants turn carbon dioxide and water into sugars and oxygen. Photosynthesis occurs alongside cellular respiration, which is a process that takes place in plant cells and animal cells alike. Cellular respiration takes sugars and turns those sugars into energy for living organisms. While animal cells obtain sugar from an outside source, plants synthesize their own sugar in a series of anabolic reactions powered by sunlight. The photosynthetic pigments present in a plant, such as chlorophyll, allow the plant to harness energy from the sun and perform the reactions necessary for photosynthesis.…

    • 391 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Abstract This experiment involved an electrophilic aromatic substitution of bromobenzene. Two products were formed: 4-nitrobromobenzene (4-NBB) and 2-nitrobromobenzene (2-NBB). Utilizing column chromatography and recrystallization, separation and purification of the two products was obtained. The mass of 4-NBB, the para product, was 1.57 grams, while the mass of 2-NBB, the ortho product, was 0.80 grams.…

    • 1570 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Trees naturally sequester atmospheric carbon dioxide through photosynthesis and thus decrease global warming and its repercussions. Carbon dioxide is an essential component of the Calvin Cycle for the production of glucose, which is the primary energy source for plants as well as many herbivorous and carnivorous consumers. With the rapid increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels from anthropogenic activity since the Industrial Revolution, scientist suspect that carbon dioxide fertilization will amplify photosynthesis and, therefore, sequester more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to the terrestrial carbon sink in the form of trees (Bonan 2008).2 Forests are a major terrestrial carbon sink and contain approximately 45% of terrestrial…

    • 1415 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    unguiculata. Treatment Mean number of leaves T0 control (P.D) 18.56 T1 Mimosa rhizobia (MR) 24.00 T2 Parasponia rhizobia (PR) 23.78 c.v. = 25.85 Statistical analysis revealed that the P-value corresponding to the F-statistical of One-Way ANOVA (see Appendix B, page 61) is higher than 0.05, suggesting that the various treatments were not significantly different as to the number of cumulative leaves of string beans. This means that the three treatments were comparable to each other had the same effect on the number of leaves of plant crop.…

    • 1220 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Acid Base Titration Essay

    • 731 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Racheal A. Krasner Professor Garfield Beckford CHEM 1211 L 25 September 2015 Lab Report Concerning Acid-Base Titrations The purpose of this experiment was to recognize the procedures for conducting acid-base titrations. Each acid-base titration used one solution to analyze another; it also involved the use of an indicator, which denoted the endpoint of the titration. The indicator used was phenolphthalein; it produced a pink hue when the titrations reached their endpoints – between pH 8 and pH 10.…

    • 731 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Great Essays

    Experiment 1: Standardisation of approximately 0.25 M Hydrochloric Acid Abstract The aim of the study was to standardise a solution of hydrochloric acid with an approximate concentration of 2.5 M against sodium carbonate solution. The main steps of this experiment were preparing the sodium carbonate solution, transferring the solution into a conical flask by using a pipette, adding the bromophenol blue indicator and titrating with hydrochloric acid until the first green colour appeared. The concentration of hydrochloric acid was found to be 0.2508 mol L-1. Introduction Standardisation is a process which is carried out to determine the actual molarity of a solution.…

    • 746 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Great Essays

Related Topics