Andrew Dent 04-24-14 1-2

Question: What happens to the biomass of the radishes if some are grown in the light and some are grown in the dark?

Hypothesis: if we grow 0.5 (g) of radish seeds in the dark and 0.5 (g) of radish seeds in the light then I think the 0.5 (g) of radish seeds growing in the dark wouldnt grow as much as the ones in the light because plants need light to photosynthesize.

Data:

average height of seedlings in dark vs. light treatment

5 4.5 4 3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0 Av. Max Dark Height (cm) Av. Max Light Height (cm)

height (cm)

types of

average biomass of seedlings in dark vs. light treatment

0.3 0.25 0.2 0.15 0.1 0.05 0 -0.05 -0.1 -0.15 Av. Dark Change in Final Biomass Av. Light Change in Final Biomass (g) (g) Series1

biomass (g)

types of enviornments

Results: The radishes that were grown in the dark were a lot taller than the one grown in the light. The ones in the dark were yellow and the ones in the light were green. The radishes grown in the light were short and the height for the short radishes are for example 0.3, 0.2, and 0.1. The average change in biomass of the radishes grown in the light was 0.26. The range for the radishes grown in the light was 0 as smallest gain in and 0.7 as the biggest gain in biomass. The average change in in the radishes grown in the dark was -0.13. The range for the radishes grown in the dark was 0.8 as the smallest gain in biomass and 4.5 as the biggest gain in biomass. The average change in height for the seedlings in the light was 1.4 and for the dark it was 4.6. Discussion: my hypothesis was partially correct. I was expecting the radishes in the dark to be shorter than the ones in the light because plants need light to photosynthesize. But thats not what happened. The seedlings in the light grow as tall as the ones in the dark, but the seedlings in

the light got heavier. It is meaningful because something taller would usually weigh more than something shorter, but the ones in the light had light to photosynthesize, so they took CO2 from the air and added it to the plants body in the form of glucose to gain mass, but it didnt grow taller. Plants need light to photosynthesize. The radishes in the dark couldnt take CO2 because they didnt have light, and so they couldnt turn anything into glucose. The reason they lost weight was because there was glucose in the seed that was ripped up by O2, energy is now used to grow, plus CO2 is breathed out making the seedlings in the dark lose mass. Conclusion: Our data indicates that plants can conduct both Photosynthesis and cellular respiration because I have date that can demonstrate it. Possible sources of error include losing biomass by dropping seeds. How that would affect our data is that it would have changed all of our data that we collected. What we would do to confirm that plants do both photosynthesis and cellular respiration is that we could put a drop of TZ onto the seedlings and what that would do is it would let us see if radish seeds do both photosynthesis and cellular respiration. What TZ does when it touches a respiring cell is the cell would turn red. If we did the same to the seedlings in the light, we would be able to see if they do both photosynthesis and cellular respiration because the part of the plant that is respiring would turn red.