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Concentration of Baking Soda Solution & How It Might Affect

the Reaction Rate of Punch-Hole Spinach Leaf Rising
Daniela Bonilla, Tomar Serota, Zeke Lightfoot, Harrison He

Introduction:
Photosynthesis is a process used by autotrophs
(plants) to capture energy from the sunlight to use
it as it's own chemical energy in order to change
carbon dioxide and water into carbohydrates
(starch and sugars) and oxygen.

Research Question:
How does the concentration of the baking soda
solution affect the rate reaction of the spinach
leaf?
Hypothesis:
The higher the concentration of baking soda in
the solution, the faster the rate reaction the
spinach leaves take to rise to the top.
Since the baking soda provides the carbon
dioxide needed for the leaf to rise, we
attempted to figure out if this will affect the rate
reaction; causing the spinach leaf to rise faster.

Experimental Design:
Our independent variable was the concentration of baking soda used in
the experiment. Our dependent variables was the rate of reaction of the
leaf and time. The controlled variables were the temperature and light.
The control group for the experiment was the solution without baking
soda or 100% water. We created the different baking soda solutions by
adding different amounts of baking soda to water. For example, we added
40 ml's of the solution while keeping the same amount of water through
serial dilution We then added 3 leafs to each dilution and timed how long
it took for the leaf to rise to the surface. This would mean that the
reaction had happened.

Percentage
of Stock(%)

Trial 1

Trial 2

Trial 3

Average
/Mean

Variance

80mL
(100%)

3 minutes
25 seconds

3 minutes
56 seconds

5 minutes
51 seconds

4 minutes
23 seconds

1 minute
7 seconds

40mL
(50%)

6 minutes
41 seconds

8 minutes
33 seconds

8 minutes
42 seconds

7 minutes
19 seconds

1 minute
16
seconds

20mL
(25%)

5 minutes
8 seconds

5 minutes
44 seconds

9 minutes
8 seconds

6 minutes
40 seconds

2 minutes
56
seconds

10mL
(12.5%)

3 minutes
45 seconds

7 minutes
25 seconds

7 minutes
55 seconds

6 minutes
22 seconds

3 minutes
27
seconds

270mL
(0%)

5 minutes
11 seconds

5 minutes
42 seconds

stopped @
6 minutes

5 minutes
27 seconds

NO DATA

Conclusion:
With the exception of the 50% concentration
tests, we concluded that the more baking
soda,the faster the reaction happens. Our
hypothesis was proven by our experiment.
Some possible errors we had was when we
vacuumed the leaf, we still left some oxygen
inside the leaf. This could prevent the leaves
from eventually floating up as a reaction. Also,
we did not wash the beaker very carefully,
leaving some baking soda in the beaker. This
could be why the leaves floated in the 0%
concentration test.
.
Some future extensions that could be done is
testing the concentrations of the baking soda
closer to zero to get an accurate test of how
fast the leave reacts with lower concentrations.
This could give us more diverse data than just
the 0% test.