Activities
Labs
- The
"Burning Peanuts Laboratory"
reveals the energy stored in food and
includes a student guide .
- The
"Effects of a Closed Environment on Living
Things" lab demonstrates how plants use carbon dioxide and
produce carbon and how animals use oxygen and produce carbon dioxide.
- This "Do Plants Consume or Release CO2? Or Both?"
lab demonstrates how plants carry on both photosynthesis and
respiration.
- The "Rate of Photosynthesis" lab explores
just that.
- Do the
"Leaf Pigment Chromatography" lab
.
- This
lab
compares the production of starch in leaves kept in the light and those
in the dark.
- This
"Fermentation by Yeast" lab
can be used in this unit or with the study of microorganisms.
This
is an image of the lab report
for this lab done by one student group.
- "Photosynthesis:
A Controlled Experiment" illustrates the effect of differing
amounts of carbon dioxide on photosynthesis in geranium
plants. Coleus or other similar plants could just as easily
be used.
- "The
Energy Content of Food Laboratory"
is another activity for determining
the calories in food and includes a teacher's guide .
- In
"The Heat is On - The Energy Stored in Food"
students will burn several types of nuts and snack foods in order to
determine their heat content per gram.
- In
Kim
Rebello's
"Every Breath You Take"
lab students investigate
whether animals and
plants carry on respiration.
- Make a
homemade calorimeter to determine "The
Energy in Food"
.
- This
"Waterweed
Simulation" is a worksheet to acompany "The
Waterweed Simulator." Students count the bubbles
released by Elodea
to determine which color of light is more effective for photosynthesis.
(Since Elodea
is hard to come by these days, this is a good alternative.)
- This
"Plant Respiration" lab
uses
seedlings and a
bromothymol blue solution to demonstrate that plants give off CO2
during respiration. - In
"Studying
the Effect of Photosynthesis and Respiration on Aquatic Chemistry"
students use microcosms and RUSS data to
investigate changes in oxygen concentrations that result from
photosynthesis and respiration. The lab includes a worksheet.
- Use pea
seeds in the "Carbon
Dioxide Production by Germinating Seeds" lab.
- Try these photosynthesis and respiraton
demos
.
Links 
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