Lilia Gonzalez

The Effect of CO2 on Photosynthesis

Background
The equation for photosynthesis is: 6CO2 + 6H2O + Light Energy -> C6H12O6
+ 6O2. The reactants for photosynthesis are carbon dioxide, water, and Light
Energy. The products for photosynthesis are oxygen and glucose. The
process of photosynthesis occurs in the leaves of a plant; more specifically in
the chloroplasts that are located in the mesophyll tissue layer. As oxygen (a
product accumulates in the mesophyll layer, it makes the leaves more
buoyant.

Hypothesis
If you increase the amount of CO2, then the photosynthesizing rate will
increase.

Materials
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Fluorescent lamp
Hole punch
Sharpie
Stopwatch
2 12mL syringes
2 plastic cups
Scotch tape

Procedures
1. Use the tape and marker to label 1 syringe CO2 and the other H2O.
Repeat for the cups.
2. Fill the cup labeled CO2 with at least 10mL of the baking soda
solution. Fill the cup labeled H2O with at least 10mL of the water
solution.
3. Use the hole puncher to punch out 20 disks of the leaves. Make sure
not to punch the central vein.
4. Place 10 leaf disks in to the syringe labeled H2O. Put the plunger
back in to the syringe until only a small amount of air and the leaf
disks remain in the syringe.

Lilia Gonzalez
5. Pull 5mL of the water solution into the syringe. Hold the syringe
upwards, and tap it gently until all the leaves are floating. Press the
plunger to get rid of any air towards the tip of the plunger.
6. Place your thumb over the syringe opening and pull back the plunger,
creating a vacuum. Hold this for 10 seconds and swirl the leaves to
suspend them in the solution.
7. Gently, release the vacuum and allow the plunger to spring back. This
should cause the disks to shrink, if it doesnt repeat.
8. Fill the syringe with the remaining 5mL of solution, for a total of 10 mL.
Place the syringe with the tip up under the fluorescent light.
9. Repeat steps 4-8, substituting the H2O solution with the CO2 (baking
soda) solution.
10.
Time the solutions for 20 minutes, checking every 2 minutes and
recording how many leaves are floating.

Results

The dependent variable is the number of leaves floating.

The independent variable is the solution that we placed the leaf disks

in: H2O and CO2.

The confounding variables include the same syringes, same amount of

solution, same number of disks, and same light source for the same
amount of time.
Each trial was completed only once.
The H2O solution trial was used as the control, since pure H2O is the

standard reactant for photosynthesis.

The graph indicates that the rate of photosynthesis is directly related
to the amount of CO2 the plant intakes during photosynthesis. In the
graph it is most clearly shown between minutes 6 & 8 that a
predominately larger amount of leaves were floating in the CO2
solution at a faster rate compared to the amount of leaves floating in
the H2O solution. The large amount of floating leaves means that
photosynthesis occurred quickly which filled the mesophyll layer with
gas and made them float.

Conclusion
The rate of photosynthesis is effected by the amount of CO2 in-take. If you
increase the amount CO2 in the plants environment, then the rate of
photosynthesis will increase. We tested this by putting one leaf in a baking

Lilia Gonzalez
soda solution and another leaf in a water solution. The baking soda solution
caused the water to have an increased amount of CO2. The water solution
was the control group, it only had a small amount of CO2. The plants that
were placed in the baking soda solution had more floating leaves in a shorter
amount of time, when compared to the control group. The floating leaves can
be related to the photosynthesizing rate, because as plants photosynthesize
they release a gas called Oxygen, the Oxygen builds up in the mesophyll
tissues in the plant leaf, and the abundance of gas causes the leaves to
become more buoyant. So as the hypothesis predicted, the more CO2 there
is, the faster photosynthesis occurs.