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
data could be compared to the seeds to help determine the exact measurement of fluid movement. The peas data showed the most movement in fluid with it ending at 38cm. This showed that for one 1 pea (0.5 mL), a lot of respiration is occurring, as seen with the high intake of oxygen, in order to produce atp that will help fuel cellular functions. The black beans moved a total of 27 cm in 20 minutes. Compared to the pea, the data showed that the respiration rate was lower in the bean. This could be the result of the two tested material being too similar in size or because black beans requires less oxygen to maintain its homeostasis level than the pea. The radish seed data is unusable because the non germinating seeds were accidentally used instead of the germinating ones. The seed started at 0cm, increased to 5 cm at 5 minutes, and stayed at 10 cm for the rest of the experiment. Non germinating seeds will go through less/no respiration because it is dormant so energy is not needed since not much cellular functions are being performed. This experiment is unusable and can not be used to prove the hypothesis because of multiply errors.
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
submerged. Understanding how much energy is needed for specific plant will help gardeners determine the best position to place the seed. Smaller seeds (which requires less energy, nutrients, and water) can be planted near the surface while larger seeds should be planted deeper. Little seeds planted too deep will exhaust themselves and die underground. Large seeds can easily dry up if planted too shallow.