Photosynthesis/Respiration in Leaf Disks

 

Ruthanne B. Pitkin

Tested Studies in Laboratory Teaching, 2004, Volume 25

Abstract

I use this lab in a two-hour introductory majors’ course, Principles of Biology II, which covers cell and molecular biology, genetics, and evolution. Over the years I have discovered that students come to this class “knowing” that plants have chloroplasts for photosynthesis, and animals have mitochondria for cellular respiration. My goal is to have the students understand that plants also have mitochondria and use cellular respiration as well as photosynthesis. This lab uses plants to illustrate both respiration and photosynthesis. The students also learn to estimate the photosynthetic and respiratory rates by creating scatterplot graphs with Excel and by calculating the rates after a visual inspection of the data.

Keywords:  photosynthesis, respiration

University of Nevada, Las Vegas (2003)