Transpiration Lab

Transpiration is the movement of water from a plant's roots and into the atmosphere through evaporation. Water is absorbed in the roots of vascular plants and up through the stem to the leaves. This is called "capillary action, a force of attraction between molecules that causes liquids to move up narrow tubes." Stomata are tiny pores on the surface of leaves that intake CO2 and release O2. A plant's transpiration rate can be measured by how much water is taken up by the roots over a period of time. "In a laboratory, a plant's transpiration rate can be measured using a potometer. A potometer can be assembled from standard laboratory materials including: a ring stand, clamps, a 10mL pipette, a 100mL burette, a T-tube, glass tubing, and rubber tubing. To measure transpiration rate, a plant sprig is mounted on the potometer and the burette and pipette are filled with water. Over time the plant will transpire and absorb water through its stem. The potometer is constructed in such a way that the plant's water source is the pipette, therefore the amount of water transpired over time can be determined by reading the water level in the pipette after time has passed. The water supply in the pipette can be replenished from the water supply in the burette by releasing the pinch clamp."

Lab:
First plant: English Ivy- By itself, rate = 1.8 ml per hour.
English Ivy with heater= 3.2.
English Ivy with fan= 5.1.
with lamp= 2.1

2nd plant: Zebra plant- 4.2
with heater- 6.1
with fan- 7.6
with lamp- 3.2

3rd plant: Dieffenbachia- 4.1
with heater- 6.0
with fan- 7.7
with lamp- 3.9

4th plant: Coleus- .9
with heater- 3.9
with fan- 6.0
with lamp- 3.0

Journal Questions
Describe the process of transpiration in vascular plants.
The process of transpiration is the process of water movining through a vascular plant and exiting through stomata in leaves.

Describe any experimental controls used in the Investigation.
Controls: The plant by itself before using the independent variables.

What environmental factors that you tested increased the rate of transpiration? Was the rate of transpiration increased for all plants tested?
Heat, wind and light. All increased: wind the most, heat the second most, and light the least most.

Did any of the environmental factors (heat, light, or wind) increase the transpiration rate more than the others? Why?
Wind increased the most because the wind creates the most energy for the water to move quicker up the stem.

Which species of plants that you tested had the highest transpiration rates? Why do you think different species of plants transpire at different rates?
Zebra plant and Dieffenbachia. Yes.

Suppose you coated the leaves of a plant with petroleum jelly. How would the plant's rate of transpiration be affected?
Transpire less because some of the stomata would be closed.

Of what value to a plant is the ability to lose water through transpiration?
Extreme value so it doesn't drown because of the absorption of water through the roots: it is a cycle.
 

Plants going through puberty -> hormones!

Auxins

Auxins regulate plant growth and development. They affect the growth of stem tips, leaves, roots, side branches, and fruit. Auxins are able to do this through stimulating cell elongation or inhibiting cell growth. Auxins are essential in affecting plant tropisms, or the plants reactions to stimuli, affecting which way they are facing. For example, auxins stimulate the cell growth of a plant leaning towards darkness and cause it to face the light. Scientists have been able to create chemical compounds that manipulate auxins so that certain plants grow differently. 

http://kidsresearchexpress.blogspot.com/2008/09/auxin.html

http://images.tutorvista.com/content/plant-growth-movements/coleopite-auxin-distribution-hypothesis.jpeg

Abscisic acid

Abscisic acid is a hormone that affects dormancy and inhibits cell growth when a plant is under stress. For example, when a plant is lacking water, abscisic acid suspends cell growth and division and causes the plant to become dormant. Also, it causes spots on leaves that ingest water to close up and gives buds and fruit a hard outer covering to survive harsh conditions.

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-abscisic-acid.htm

http://www.signaling-gateway.org/update/images/su-0601-3-i1.jpg

Ethylene

Ethylene is a gaseous hormone that stimulates ripening and the release of dormancy after the stress explained above is over. It stimulates leaf and fruit abscission, meaning it sheds the outer covering created by abscisic acid. Ethylene counteracts everything abscisic acid does after the plant is safe again. Lastly, it stimulates flower opening.

http://www.plant-hormones.info/ethylene.htm

http://www.hort.cornell.edu/mattson/leatherwood/files/Fig3.jpg

 

Trees and plants and stuff

Since we are beginning to study photosynthesis, we had to obseverve trees 'n stuff.

Here are my observations:

FLOWER 1

The first flower was white with pinkish tips. There was a pincher bug stuck in the one below which is interesting because that's not the typical insect to be hanging around flowers. 

The flower was smooth and silky; I wanted to cuddle with it.

There weren't any thorns on its stem and the bulb was a pinkish-red color. On the full-bloomed flower (see above) it almost looked yellow it was so white. The petals were layers upon layers and the flower sprouted almost diagonally, not upward. 

FLOWER 2

Flower 2 was yellow with thorns on its stem. The petals were smooth and silky as well, feeling very similar to the first flower. 

Flower 2 sprouted upward and the petals seem to cover and enclose the stamen (male part) and pistil (female part) of the flower. As seen below, the flower's leaves had weird spots on them. Poison ivy?

FLOWER 3

Flower 3 was the most unusual of the bunch. Its petals were smooth on top and scaly on the bottom. The stamens and pistil were exxtremely long and skinny. The flower resembles the sun, sorta.

The leaves were long and smooth with sticky filaments keeping them together. The buds were completely enclosed and squishy kinda damp. There were no thorns.

TREE 1

Tree 1 had no flowers but it did have some seed pods that looked like dried up brown and crunchy flowers.

The leaves were small, green, and flakey. The branches were long and skinny. 

The trunk just looked like a bunch of branches. 

TREE 2

The flowers were fuzzy and looked like red little cherries.

The trunk was red!

The leaves were really fuzzy and green. 

So those were my observations and here is a diagram of the male and female parts of a flower:

http://www.amnh.org/learn/biodiversity_counts/ident_help/Parts_Plants/parts_of_flower.htm

The stamen is male, the pistil is female.

Hope you enjoyed!

Botany of Desire wink wink nudge nudge

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-RQ64mOnc1AY/TeXdlfx2_BI/AAAAAAAAAfI/xfQrdt-WFkc/s1600/honey-bee-fly-flower-fight-daisy-wings-photo.jpg

In the novel, Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan takes a much different look at the world of plants than we usually do. 

http://www.colourbox.com/preview/3090063-150969-collage-with-human-hand-holding-a-green-plant.jpg

This view is that we don't choose what plants to plant, but rather, they choose us. Pollan rails on the word "domestic," because that implies that we have domesticated animals. Instead, genomes of dogs have evolved to be the "domesticated" animals to accomodate us. Thus, it is more appropriate to say that dogs domesticate themselves.

http://www.babelsdawn.com/.a/6a00d83452aeca69e2014e8912d2e8970d-pi

Pollan preaches that plants know exactly what they're doing when they show that potential for a juicy tenderness of a french fry in their round potato figure. Plants play us like they do bees: they display certain characteristics and their genome book shows us what we want to see, and in turn we spread their seeds, much like bees spread their pollen after being enticed by certain characteristics.

http://www.babelsdawn.com/.a/6a00d83452aeca69e2014e8912d2e8970d-pi

The beautiful thing about nature is that it is one big reciprocal cycle, and we rely on so many different organisms. It is also crazy to think that plants are able to understand our desires (ie getting intoxicated) and enable themselves to pleasure us (ie marijuana plants). 

http://www.babelsdawn.com/.a/6a00d83452aeca69e2014e8912d2e8970d-pi

Bugs Bunny vs. Wile Coyote

Today we did the wolf hunting rabbits lab. Here were the results of the lab:

Generation	White Rabbit	Light Green Rabbit	Green Rabbit	Dark Green Rabbit	Wolves
1	1	1	1	1	1
2	2	2	2	0	1
3	2	2	2	0	2
4	4	2	0	0	1
5	8	2	0	0	1
6	10	0	0	0	2
7	8	0	0	0	4
8	1	1	1	1	1
9	0	2	0	0	2
10	0	2	0	0	1
11	0	2	0	0	1
12	0	4	0	0	1
13	0	6	0	0	1
14	0	8	0	0	1
15	0	16	0	0	1
16	0	22	0	0	2
17	0	32	0	0	4
18	0	40	0	0	8
19	0	28	0	0	10
20	0	16	0	0	10
21	0	4	0	0	4
22	0	2	0	0	1
23	0	2	0	0	1
24	0	4	0	0	1
25	0	4	0	0	1

To see the graph please follow this link: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0ByEdJ0zBzNIERURuNE05VlVadlk/edit

Conclusion

http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/SvDBmCNMKeA/hqdefault.jpg

The first pieces of our data didn't make too much sense but here is a possible explanation: The first few generations of rabbits were still adapting to their mutations so the numbers were relatively similar with the normal white bunnies actually surviving the most. However, once the adaptations were complete, the light green rabbit population began to thrive, while every other variation of rabbit fur went extinct. This is because the light green rabbits used their fur as camouflage, blending into the light green background of the temperate grassland. Many wolves starved when there was a small population of rabbits on the playing field, obviously, because there were less rabbits to eat. Thus, the light green adaptation worked the best because it allowed the rabbits to blend in and made it tougher for the wolves to find food.