Radish Seeds Respiration Essay

The purpose of this lab was to investigate how size of seeds impact respiration rate. It was hypothesized that bigger seed will require more oxygen because more energy is needed to sustain the seed’s homeostasis. For this experiment 4 groups was set up with 0.5 mL worth of the following seeds: peas (1) , black beans (1), radish seeds, and glass beads (control). The black bean served as the biggest size, peas were medium, and radish seeds were the smallest. After setting up the microrespirometer and placing each tested object inside the barrel, it was placed in a water bath at 19 degrees celsius and food color was placed in the capillary tube in order to observe the respiration process. The control group moved a total of 7 cm due to its sensitivity to the pressure or temperature, this
The first error was different seeds were being used. This is another being added into the experiment that could affect the results since different seeds could have different respiration rate due to how much energy it needs to sustain life. A seed that does not require a lot of energy will have a lower respiration rate than ones that require an abundant amount of atp. Another error was the radish seeds being dormant. The radish seeds served as the smallest seed and could be used to compare to the bigger seeds but since it was dormant, the data collected could not be used for an accurate comparison. This makes it harder to finalize and formulate a conclusion. Another error could be the possible chance of one group undergoing respiration before another. When placing each microrespirometer into the water bath and adding food coloring to the capillary tube, the pea group was accidentally submerged first before the other groups. This could have caused the pea to undergo more respiration due to its extended time that was not accounted for since the timer started when the last group was