4/1/10

Today, I continued working on my lab report. I sent my lab report to Miss weissman for a final review and final tips. Experimental Results

This experiment is focused on if there is a relationship between the oxygen production of Ulva algae and UV light. If there is a relationship it will show in the results. I collected data for 12 days, February 8, 9, 18, 19, 22, 23, 24, and March 1st through 3rd. The results are shown in my data table. Even though my data was collected in a short period of time, I was able to obtain results that confirm my hypothesis. The algae that were exposed to the UV light for 7 hours per day produced a mean of 6.62 mL’s per day, while the algae that were exposed to fluorescent light produced a mean of 6.58 mL’s of oxygen per day. In addition, the highest production of oxygen in a day came from the algae that were exposed to UV light, with a production of 11.40 mL’s. In the graph you can clearly see that the production of oxygen was higher with UV light than the one under regular light. In conclusion, my results back up my hypothesis because there was more production of oxygen for the algae under UV light.

In my graph I found that there was a big decrease from February 22nd to the 23rd. The oxygen production went from 8.2 mL’s to 0.8 mL’s in a day with the fluorescent light algae. The algae exposed to UV light also had a decrease but it wasn’t as bad, the oxygen production for UV light went from February 22nd to the 24th and it went from 9.9 to 4.0 mL’s. Both oxygen productions ended about the same, 7 and 7.2.







Conclusion:

My hypothesis is, If UV light affects plants then the amount of oxygen will change. My data supports my hypothesis because in my data it shows that the algae that was exposed to UV light had an average of 6.62 mL’s of oxygen per day while the algae under the fluorescent light produced 6.58 mL’s of oxygen per day. The averaged data can be used as a tool to interpret the data that was collected. The average used is called the mean. The mean is when you divide the total of giving amounts by the number of amounts in the set. The results I got were a cause of the UV light affect on the photosynthesis process. Photosynthesis is the process of how plants get their energy from the sun and also how they produce oxygen. When the UV light is exposed to the algae the alga’s photosynthesis process increases therefore producing more oxygen then the algae with fluorescent light. The exposure of low levels of UV light to plants will make plants produce more oxygen. Therefore, they will grow in a short period of time.
If I were to do this experiment over there are a couple things I would have fixed. I would have measured the length from the UV lamp to the algae and try to match it with the length of the fluorescent light to the other algae. This way it would be equally matched. I would also have started earlier and ended later. I started 2 or 3 days late because the timer I was using wasn’t working and I forgot about it one day. When the project ended I decided to end it a couple days before. This was a mistake because the more days of testing the better your results would have been. I didn’t measure how much algae I had in each beaker; I just put 2 amounts of algae without measuring so maybe one had more than the other. In conclusion, the production of oxygen from the algae exposed to UV light is higher than the production of oxygen from the algae exposed to natural light. There is a direct relationship between the production of oxygen and energy received by the plant. The relationship between the production of oxygen and UV light is caused by the rate of the photosynthesis, which has an effect due to the intensity of light