Elodea Research Paper

Abstract

Elodea, also known as Elodea Canadensis, or waterweeds, lives favorably underwater. You can find Elodea mainly in natural waters in North America such as ponds, rivers, or lakes. Elodea has expanded all over the world as well, particularly in Europe. This aquatic plant multiplies rapidly and grows in a variety of conditions and environments, which is why it’s considered a weed. Elodea is often used in aquariums to stabilize the oxygen balance. It’s a fierce photosynthetic which makes it easy to measure the changes in carbon dioxide. In this experiment, the effects of photosynthesis and respiration of Elodea caused by different temperatures were studied. We used three different temperatures, room temp, cold, and warm in three
Before distributing the water into each beaker, we had 150 ml of water in a testing tube and blew bubbles into the water with a straw timed for one minute to ensure they had the same amount of CO2 produced. We then distributed 150 ml of the water equally into the four beakers and weighed 1.5g of elodea to make sure an even amount was going into the three beakers. One beaker contained no elodea that was used as our control. Three of the four beakers contained three different temperatures, cold, warm, and room temperature. The cold water temperature was approximately 0 degrees Celsius and sat in a bucket of cold water. The warm temperature was approximately 34 degrees Celsius and sat in a bucket of warm water. The room temperature was approximately 22 degrees Celsius and sat on the lab table. We monitored the containers for a period of sixty minutes. After the hour passed we gathered our containers and added drops of sodium hydroxide necessary to equal the carbonic acid produced by CO2. We counted the amount of drops used of NaOH and stirred it till the colorless solution turned into a light pink solution for each container and recorded our
Our results supported our hypothesis stating that the elodea submerged in cold water would have a greater decrease in the amount of CO2 produced rather than in room temperature water or warm water. In the article,“ Growth, reproduction, and photosynthesis of ragweed parthenium”, supported our hypothesis showing that their “carrot grass” had a suppressed photosynthetic rate in the winter with colder temperatures compared to the photosynthetic rate in the summer with warmer temperatures (Pandey,