Algae Lab

The experiment we conducted in lab used three different species of algae, Macrocystis (brown), Plocamium (red) and Ulva (green). Before we conducted anything, we first measured the initial oxygen concentration in the water that was used to house each alga. This was done because in the water that we used there happened to be phytoplankton which can respire and photosynthesize. If we didn’t take them into consideration our results would end up skewed. Once that was known we took a piece of each algae that had a surface area of 39.26 cm² and placed them in individual flasks filled with the water we had previously measured. Each algae was placed into two bottles that were labeled dark and light. The bottle labeled dark was covered with aluminum
This was done for each algae species. The next step was solving for the surface area comparison which can be labeled at mg of oxygen produced by cm squared per hour or micro grams of oxygen produced per hour by cm squared. First we took the number that we calculated previous which represented the total amount of oxygen produced by the algae itself and divided it by the surface area of that specific algae. Once that was done we were able to take that number and divide by the time that algae spent in its condition whether it was outside or inside. To make things easier on us we then converted this number to micrograms so the numbers were quite larger. Once the surface area comparison was conducted for the dark and light for each species we would calculated the gross photosynthesis measured in micrograms of oxygen produced each hour per each centimeter squared. In order to get this number we added the dark and light surface area comparison together for each species. The last and final calculation that was done was in regards to photosynthesis vs. dark respiration. We wanted to know if the algae were producing more in one area vs. another. We did this by subtracting the dark gross photosynthetic rate from the