Spinach Lab Report

Collecting Photosynthetic Rates in Spinach (Spinacia oleracea) Introduction: The purpose of this study was to see which light color would cause the spinach sample to photosynthesize the most within the given time. In order to understand photosynthesis, we need to know that chloroplasts absorb light energy from the sun, the plant then takes that energy along with water and carbon dioxide and changes it to sugar and oxygen. This happens in order for the plants to grow. But, light energy comes in a spectrum of colors called visible light. When visible light is absorbed it is also reflected, such as the green and yellow range. Photosynthetic pigments also protect plants from UV rays. Carotenoids absorb light in the blue range which gives them
Based off the oxygen emittance we were able to determine the white light as the light that allowed the spinach samples to photosynthesize best, as seen in figure 2. In figure 1, we can see that none of the plants were able to photosynthesize. Respiration rates happen during the night when there is no sun or light to fuel the plants energy source. We can also see that the blue light didn’t do to well and started conserving it’s energy and oxygen. In figure 3, we get the gross data which is the sum of the absolute value of photosynthesis in the light and respiration in the dark. We are able to see that the white light did far better than the
The red light didn’t photosynthesize as well as the white light did and had low photosynthetic rates compared to some of the other visible lights. I think this may have happened because the lights have a color coating, so the red light wasn’t a pure red light and may have filtered out the light. In figure 2, white light almost doubles the results of the red light. Even in figure 3, the gross rate, the white and blue light were able to photosynthesize more than the red light. I think this happens because plants are able to photosynthesize based on the color of natural light, such as the sun and moon, white light. “White light is composed of all the visible colors in the electromagnetic spectrum…As light passes through a prism, it is bent, or refracted, by the angles and plane faces of the prism and each wavelength of light is refracted by a slightly different amount” (Davidson, 2015). This means white light is every visible light, meaning white light would best be absorbed by plants. You could test this by conducting an experiment with several plants, all of the same height and breed, leaving half in the sunlight and moonlight and the other half under lights that aren’t white, blue, or yellow to see which light would have the best photosynthetic