Preview

How Does The Color Of Light Affect The Rate Of Photosynthesis

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
950 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
How Does The Color Of Light Affect The Rate Of Photosynthesis
Introduction Plants are considered photoautotrophs which means that they draw energy from the sun and use it to form starch molecules. The process by which this happens is called photosynthesis and results in the formation of oxygen and glucose. Plants take in carbon dioxide, water, and light then release oxygen back into the air. This process happens because of the movement of hydrogen to the hydrocarbons that are produced during photosynthesis. The discovery of photosynthesis is attributed to Dutch scientist Jan Ingenhousz who was the first to find that light is necessary to the process, it happens in the green parts of the plant, and that the product of photosynthesis is released into the air. The first and second part of the lab will …show more content…
The light closest to the plant and the most intense led to the production of the most amount of oxygen. The furthest light from the plant led to the least amount of oxygen produced for the three different distances. These results show how the rate of photosynthesis and the by-product produced is increased as the intensity of light is increased. The second part of the experiment reveals that the color of light also has an effect of the rate of photosynthesis. The red light resulted in the greatest amount of oxygen produced and the blue was not too far behind. Green produced the lowest amount of oxygen because that is the only color the chlorophyll does not absorb. It also has longer wavelengths than the blue and red light. The results demonstrate that the wavelengths of light relate to the rate of photosynthesis and the shorter the wavelength the higher the rate. If yellow bulbs were used then the rate of photosynthesis would be similar to that of green because they have similar wavelengths and and violet light would have a rate similar to blue because of their similar wavelengths. White light at the distance of 25 cm produced a lot more oxygen than the colored lights at the same distance because it contains the entire spectrum of visible light and the chlorophyll would absorb all those wavelengths except for green. That would cause the plant to have a high rate of

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Week 2 BIO Assignmen

    • 760 Words
    • 3 Pages

    As stated in the intro photosynthesis, “is the process is where plants use “light energy from the sun that is converted into carbon dioxide and water to glucose sugar and oxygen gas through a series of reactions.” ("Chemical Formula Basic Chemistry - Writing Chemical Formula To Balancing Chemical Equations", 2014) All of this information is complied in an equation that helps understand the process, carbon dioxide + water = light energy => glucose + oxygen. The carbon dioxide can be found in the air, water comes from the earth and the energy comes from the sun. Chloroplasts trap the light energy, water then enters the leaves from the earth, and the carbon dioxide enters from the stomata. All of these combined produce glucose and oxygen, which then leaves the leaf and is stored in the plant tissue.…

    • 760 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Figure 2. The rate of photosynthesis in elodea plants with different color light filters which include clear, red, blue, and green. The color that produced the highest rate of photosynthesis was clear at .48, then red at .28, and finally green at…

    • 1719 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Photosynthesis Lab

    • 1012 Words
    • 5 Pages

    HYPOTHESIS: I predict that the rate of oxygen produced increases, as the light intensity increases, but only to a point. I predict this will happen because the plant will have enough carbon dioxide and water to keep up with the amount of light that there is. When there is less light intensity, photosynthesis will happen at a slower rate because gradually there will not be enough sunlight as there is carbon dioxide and water.…

    • 1012 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Photosynthesis Lab

    • 279 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Hypothesis: I predict that the wavelength intensity will affect the rate of photosynthesis more than light intensity will.…

    • 279 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Photosynthesis is the process in which light energy is converted to chemical energy, and allows plants to grow, flower and produce seed. The process of photosynthesis requires an organelle called chloroplast and a pigment called chlorophyll The energy of the light is absorbed by chlorophyll and in turn supplies the plant with energy to transform carbon dioxide and water into oxygen and carbohydrates. (lab handout). The process of photosynthesis requires an organelle called chloroplast and a pigment called chlorophyll.…

    • 948 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Light Reaction Lab

    • 477 Words
    • 2 Pages

    This lab explores the effect of light intensity and light wavelength on photosynthesis. The quantity of energy [ATP] produced will change depending upon on these parameters.…

    • 477 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Photosynthesis occurs in all green plants and is the beginning of nearly all food chains therefore a source of life to all living organisms. It is the process where plants transform light energy from the sun into chemical energy. By using light energy trapped by chlorophyll (light absorbing pigment), plants combine carbon dioxide and water to form glucose and oxygen.…

    • 1825 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Based off the results from this lab the student was able to determine and have an overall better understanding of the variables that affect the rate of photosynthesis in a plant. The first variable the student tested in the lab was 30cm of light with CO2 present. The student started this trial with all 10-leaf disks and timed how many leaf disks came up every minute for 15 minutes. One minute into the trial and the student recorded that no leaf disks had yet to rise to the top of the solution. At three minutes into the trial the student recorded that no leaf disks had still yet to rise to the top of the solution.…

    • 2047 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Thus, in this experiment, we are required to determine the rate of photosynthesis of leaf disc. But first, we must know that, the rate of photosynthesis and the amount of oxygen produced by a plant is affected by different factors such as light intensity, temperature, amount of water and amount of CO2. Thus, we are investigating effect of light intensity on the rate of photosynthesis in leaf discs by varying the light intensity, and fixing the amount of sodium hydrogen carbonate solution and temperature.…

    • 3533 Words
    • 15 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Photosynthesis is the process whereby plants utilize C02, H2O and Sunlight to create food in the form of a sugar called glucose. As a byproduct of this reaction, the plants also release oxygen.…

    • 828 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    he end of the light bulb is a test tube with the pondweed in it. There are 5cm intervals after every experiment to show the different in the light intensity due to the distance. If I am also able to keep the room as dark as possible with the only light source coming from my light bulb the intensity will remain constant. I predict that if I am able to keep all these variables constant though my 25 processes, I will hope to find that as I create more distance from the light source, the slower the rate of photosynthesis will be created, the closer to the light the rate of photosynthesis will increase. I believe this because the higher the rate of…

    • 530 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In this experiment, the class examined how the rate of photosynthesis was affected by different light colors at different distances in shoots of a Cabomba plant. The plants were placed in two different beakers, one with recently boiled and cooled distilled water and the other with saturated sodium bicarbonate solution. The three different color photoflood lamps used for this experiment were white, red, and green at four distances of thirty, sixty, ninety, and one hundred-twenty centimeters away from the plants. There were six groups testing the white light, one group testing the red light, and two groups testing the green light.…

    • 567 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Photosynthesis

    • 2078 Words
    • 9 Pages

    The research being conducted in this practical aims to look at the differing wavelengths of visible light, and which range produces the most photosynthetic activity in green land plants. Since these plants absorb red and blue lights the most readily, and chlorophyll a absorbs blue light the most out of any other wavelength, it is hypothesised that in this practical the most activity will be seen under the blue light (Hoober 1984).…

    • 2078 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    It is a well-known fact that plants need light for nourishment, yet many people are ignorant of the reasons behind this. The biological process by which green plants utilize carbon dioxide, water and sunlight to form their own food is called photosynthesis (unknown). Past research has demonstrated that red and blue rays maximize this process (Rothenburger, 1993). The purpose of this experiment was to examine the effect of several different light sources on plant growth. The Five lights sources studied were incandescent, black, fluorescent, colored, and natural light.…

    • 1126 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    I predict that the plant under blue and purple light will have a higher photosynthetic rate because according to the colour spectrum, they are of shorter wavelength thus they have a higher energy. The red light and green light will have lower…

    • 1994 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays