Investigation #11: Transpiration

Introduction
Transpiration is a process used to let water evaporate from plants. The water movement is controlled by differences in water potential and because the surrounding has less water potential than the plants, the water would be moving out of the plant to its outside environment. During this process, water is shot up through the xylem and held together because of its cohesion. It leaves through the stomata, which is generally in the backside of leaves and hidden away from the light source to prevent from excessive opening and transpiring. The purpose of this lab is to test the rate of transpiration in different and extreme condition. Sixteen plants were tested on two per table and each table were able to test their own hypothesis and the final results were put up and compared to each other.

Hypothesis
If plants are placed in an environment where there is not much water or excessive heat, then transpiration will take place the most as water tends to move from an area of high concentration the plants to an area of low concentration the environment.

Procedure
Groups were given two plants each to experiment on. The plants were to be watered one time only in the beginning but were weighted each day so the loss or gain of weight can be recorded. At that point, there was also a controlled plant that was put in a normal condition

where it was watered once in the beginning and weighted each day. The plants were kept for five day, the first day was the set up, and on this day the plants were watered and weighted by mass. There were four conditions: constant wind, constant light with no heat, constant darkness, and excess humidity. These conditions were given out to eight groups and each of the conditions was given to two groups. At the end of the 4th day, the plants were taken out of their condition and weighted one final time. After, leaves were plugged out and their stomata were measured. The rate of transpiration were taken according to weight of each plants divided by the average surface area of the plants. The data was to be compared at the end where one table was set up for all groups and one graph was made for all.

Data
Record of Plant Masses Under Different Environment Condition Over Four Days

Control High Wind Group 1 High Wind Group 2 High Light Group 3 High Light Group 4 Humidity Group 5 Humidity Group 6 Darkness Group 7 Darkness Group 8

Day 0 (g) Day 1 (g) Day 2 (g) Day 3 (g) Day 4 (g) A B A B A B A B A B 89.12 85.78 86.20 82.34 84.34 80.06 82.35 77.89 77.89 76.32 83.80 98.20 91.65 88.75 88.58 80.31 92.39 91.16 87.85 85.79 89.36 83.98 85.37 77.38 88.36 93.89 83.18 79.85 81.4 78.08 77.57 75.86 88.96 92.24 77.93 72.55 72.55 72.8 77.10 73.19 85.10 90.76 71.71 66.71 65.27 67.69 79.01 83.3 66.01 59.26

114.50 90.06 114.29 90.65 114.29 90.68 114.89 92.78 115.12 95.12 93.45 88.10 93.87 88.25 92.98 89.25 89.72 93.83 97.49 93.62 88.91 89.49 95.38 90.15 97.12 93.23 88.48 89.25 95.15 90.28 96.81 92.75 88.21 84.32 94.94 90.38 92.44 88.91

Transpiration
Transparative H2O Loss (mL/m2) 3500 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0 -500 -1000 Day 0 Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Control Wind Humidity Light Darkness

Experimental Analysis
According to the data presented and the chart drafted above, the condition that makes the plants lose the most water was light. This is true, as light would lead to excessive opening of the stomata and excessive water loss and because of this, the amount of H2O loss was always happening and the increase of loss was constant. The least amount of H2O loss was humidity because the environment was constantly moist. As said before, water moves by the rule of concentration it goes from a place of high concentration to a place of low concentration until its equal. Because of the moistness, it makes the environment have a higher water concentration so the plants transpired less than it would in a normal environment and gained water instead.

Error Analysis
There were some errors that could not have been helped because of the various groups mixing and various days of unavailability by the students. Things like mass and calculation were

wrong, some of the mass for a day was never shown and some mass taken was a mistake as it shows an increase in weight as opposed to a decrease in weight. The calculation error was only human and some might have gone unchecked as an ensemble of data was gathered and put on a chart and nobody crossed examined the others. There was also no double-checking the masses, as that was not possible.

Conclusion
The hypothesis was correct as the data shows that the most weight lost was during extreme light and the least weight lost was during high humidity. The one that neither gain nor lost a lot of water was darkness, which made a lot of sense because darkness doesnt leave the stomata with excessive opening nor does it make the environments water concentration more or less than what the plants are. The experiment was predictable, except for the darkness, and was quite easy to do. The hardest part was the calculation and gathering the information, as there were a lot of people and eight different groups so someone would have the same thing within a group and others would have a completely different thing and they would have to go back and change some factors. Some group might not have caught that and proceeded with the wrong information, altering the experiment altogether. But, everything went well and pretty smoothly and because of technology, everybody was reachable so the errors were easily corrected and most everybody had the correct things. As for some of the other errors, it was only human and errors were unavoidable.