Week 12

Green plants use light energy to produce their own food with photosynthesis You may have already learned that plants require water and carbon dioxide and light for photosynthesis and produce oxygen and glucose sugar in the process. If one of those three inputs (water, carbon dioxide, or light) is in short supply, then photosynthesis will slow down or even stop. How does light intensity affect the rate of photosynthesis?

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Today, you will work in teams to conduct an experiment to see if the amount of light plants receive can affect this production of oxygen:

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​Have you ever wondered how plants are able to pull water out of the ground? It’s not like they have a heart to pump water around or even a digestion system to extract the water from the soil!

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In fact, water movement in plants doesn’t rely

on energetically expensive biological pumps

or even magic. It relies on some pretty basic

physical principles operating within unique

plant structures, and anyone can understand it.

We’ll see how in this home experiment.

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Solve the questions from the lab report guide in your notebook:

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During this class, we will use a GIZMO (a virtual simulation of a process). In this gizmo you will be able to modify some factors that affect photosynthesis, among them: light intensity, light color, temperature and level of CO2.

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You will work in pairs to solve a worksheet that must be uploaded in Schoology. Follow the instructions carefully and use the simulation following the steps from the activity:

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