Lab Time!!!

This week in AP Biology we did a photosynthesis lab. The first portion of out lab tested the different pigments in spinach leaves. The next portion of our lab tested the rate of photosynthesis in spinach leaves. 

The first lab where we tested for the different pigments showed four different pigments. There was chlorophyll a, chlorophyll b, xanthophyll, and carotene in the spinach leaves. We then tested for a constant that measured how far the chromatography solvent travelled divided by how far the pigment travelled. 

Part two of the lab tested the rate of photosynthesis in spinach leaves. At the first of the lab we took ten spinach leaf discs and put them in a syringe with a bicarbonate solution with dish soap. We them created a vacuum inside the syringe to compress the mesophyll cells so the leaf discs would sink. We then placed the discs into another bicarbonate solution. Every thirty seconds we checked for leaf discs that we're floating. This would mean the mesophyll cells had  air in them and that photosynthesis was occurring.