Student Sheet 3

www.saps.org.uk

Investigating the Behaviour of Leaf Discs

Technical and teaching notes

Introduction

This provides a fun way for students to get hands-on when investigating photosynthesis.

Students punch out small discs from leaves, and float them in a syringe of sodium hydrogen
carbonate solution. Once gas is evolved by photosynthesis, the leaf discs rise and fall.

Students can compare the rate of photosynthesis in sun and shade plants and at different
light intensities, amongst many other factors.

Apparatus

Materials required by each student/group:

2 x 10 cm3 syringes
about 20 cm3 0.2 M sodium hydrogen carbonate solution
stop clock

Materials to be shared

Strong source of light

Sheets of glass or perspex can also be provided to prevent heat from the light
reaching the syringe, though this may well not be necessary
cork borer no. 3 or jumbo straws
Plant e.g. punnet of supermarket cress, radish cotyledons, fast plant cotyledons, ivy,
clover, Pelargonium (in spring and summer).
Other plants are possible but they must be in good health and growing rapidly. It is
best to check possible plants beforehand for this experiment. Watercress, for
example, appears not to work. The plants do not need to be destarched.

Preparation of material
0.2M sodium hydrogen carbonate (20 cm3 per group/student) made up with water that
has been allowed to come up to room temperature (20 30C). 45 drops of
detergent should be added to a litre of solution. This helps prevent the discs from
sticking to the sides of the syringe.

Teachers Tips

Teacher John Hewitson writes:

 Student Sheet 3

www.saps.org.uk
We have got reasonable results with radish, grown as far as the seed leaves - they are about
2-3 cm diameter and grow well under a light bank (just planted in a tray of compost).
Watercress didn't seem to work for me even though it must have huge air spaces/bouyancy
chambers.

We got them to work much better if we cut them out with "jumbo" straws, such as you get at
McDonalds. Best to cut lots and lots of discs. Blow them into one syringe, make sure you
have a syringe that will generate a good vacuum - we found several different designs in the
drawer and some were much better than others. Get all the air out of the syringe and put your
finger over the nozzle, then pull the plunger down and hope that bubbles will come out. Push
the plunger up to generate a positive pressure and try to water-log the disks. Repeat the
vacuum and high pressure cycles. THEN, put the syringe aside (preferably in the dark) and
you will be surprised how many discs sink during the next few minutes that were floating just
after the vacuum was last released. Some workers add a little detergent (about 1 drop per
litre) to help the bubbles to come out and prevent the discs sticking to the sides of the syringe.

We use a mercury vapour lamp for such experiments, but have done effect of temperature on
photosynthesis under a SAPS light bank (8xfluorescent tubes side by side - about 15cm from
the bulbs). We had one of the mercury vapour bulbs explode spontaneously, so we also use
500w halogen floodlamps. I wouldn't expect ordinary tungsten bulbs to give much
photosynthesis - certainly not at only 40W. I think 500W is an overkill, so you should be able
to get different distances from the lamp to work. Remember if you double the distance from
the light, the quantity of light will go down by the square root. The way to do it is to call 10cm
from the light 100 units, 20cm will be 10 units, 40cm will be 3.16 units and 80cm will be 1.78
units.

I don't go for a heat filter as the experiments are usually over fairly quickly and there is not a
huge amount of heat under the light bank of fluorescent tubes or more than 10cm from a
powerful bulb. It is easy to put the syringe in a beaker of water which at least slows down the
rate of warming up.

Some students have asked whether the leaf disc experiment could be used to find the
compensation point (the point at which Photosynthesis and Respiration are in balance and
the amount of oxygen being produced by photosynthesis will just balance the amount being
used by respiration). At this point there will be no oxygen bubbles being produced in the leaf
discs. Carbon dioxide is much more soluble in water, so it doesn't form bubbles of gas. In
theory, above the compensation point, discs should rise and below the compensation point
they should fall, but this is not an easy way to find the compensation point. Instead, I would
using bicarbonate indicator solution, which turns purple when CO2 is removed and yellow
when CO2 is produced.