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Stomata Lab

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INTRODUCTION All plants have tiny pore like structures called stomata (singular, stoma). When carbon dioxide enters a leaf, oxygen then escapes through the stomata. Each stoma is surrounded by guard cells in the leaf’s epidermis layer (Reece, et al. 109). Photosynthesis is the process in which plants gain their energy and nutrients. Solar energy is used to convert carbon dioxide and water into sugars. Oxygen is then released as a by-product of this process. When the time is right, the stomata open and allow carbon dioxide to enter the leaf and later the release of water and oxygen takes place. If the stomata are closed, this means that the plant is actively holding its water (Reece, et al. 109). As humans, we benefit greatly …show more content…

Being that water is a huge component for plants, we decided to build our experiment based on that factor. Just like water is essential for humans, it is essential for plants as well. The water that exists in the earth’s atmosphere is replaced approximately twice yearly by transpiration that is controlled by the stomata in the plants all around us (Santrucek, et al. 191). Evapotranspiration is the major mechanism that put the stomata to work. The evaporation of water coming from each of the opened stoma on the leaves lowers pressure under the stomata. The opening and closing of the stomata that occurs is a regulation process for the plants. It appears that the amount of water around a plant would affect the plant’s stomatal density and the rate at which it has to regulate its water intake. It would make sense that the more water there is around the plant, the more stomata needed to evaporate the water around it. My group and I decided to take leaves from two plants of the same species but from two different environments. Our hypothesis is that the leaves of the plant along a water source will have a greater stomatal density than the leaves from a plant that were dry and away from the water …show more content…

The goal of the experiment was to gather stomatal density prints from each set of leaves from our two environments (twenty total prints). It was important to keep our leaves separated and labeled to avoid confusion later in the data collecting. Colby, Marlee, Kamy, and I prepared the leaves and rubbed clean any leaves that felt dirty or fuzzy. Kamy took the leaves from near the water source and Marlee took the leaves from the dry source. Kamy and Marlee painted two thin coats of nail polish on sections of the leaves. We then began step 7 in the manual and carefully placed a strip of tape on the painted section of each leaf. After pressing down the tape and carefully lifting it from the leaf, the tape was placed on a glass microscope slide. We trimmed off any excess tape so that the slide would fit correctly under the microscope. Colby and I then examined each stomatal print under the microscope, starting at the lowest power and then working our way up to 40x. Colby would count the stomata first, and then I would follow and count what I saw. The stomata are the coffee bean shapes on the slide. On page 14 of the lab manual, there is a table to record the data that we found. The numbers of stomata that Colby and I counted were logged and then averaged for later

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