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How Does The Color Of Light Affect The Rate Of Photosynthesis

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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

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