Onion Root Lab

Giovanna Tapia
Biology
Mr. Lee
4/25/15
Introduction: In my biology class we have learning about mitosis and
meiosis. Mitosis produces identical cells during growth. Meiosis
makes sperm and egg also known as gametes. We also learned that
cells spend most of their life in interface. So we decided to looked at a
onion root slide because the onion roots go through mitosis. We got
out a microscope to observe the onion root. Then we looked at which
phase of Mitosis takes longer. The faces of Mitosis are Prophase,
metaphase, anaphase and lastly telophase.

Hypothesis: If prophase is the longest stage then we’ll see more

prophase in the onion root

Materials:
● 1 camera Phone
● 1 Microspace
● 1 Onion Root slide
● 1 lab Handout

Procedure:
1. Start with the 4x objective lens and find region of active cell
division
2. Switch to the 10x objective lens follow by the 40x objective lens
and begin observation at the lower end of this region
3. Scan the root tip moving upwards and downward through a
column of cells
4. Tally each cell in a stage of mitosis that you observe being
careful you tally everything right
 5. Record group data and class data on your table.

Methods: In this experiment, the onion root was the independent

variable and the faces of mitosis was the dependent variable. We
chose to change the independent variable in this way because onion
roots are always growing therefore mitosis occurs.

Data And observation:

Your Total Class Total Percent

Prophase 16 96 32%

Metaphase 2 27 9%

Anaphase 2 57 19%

Telaphase 4 120 40%

Totals 24 300
Analysis: We had to figure out which face of mitosis was the longest.
We stated that if prophase was the longest stage then, we’ll see more
prophase in the onion root.

COnclusion: Our hypotheses was supported by our data. I know because

when we observed the onion root we counted more pro[hase than
anything else. As the onion root was observed more closely we got to
see that the faces of mitosis was easier to count. I think our result are
due to the fact that we did this experiment in class with the help of
our teachers. Our problem with our experiment was identification
errors occurred in many groups. This might affect our result because
some groups changed our overall total. We can improve this
experiment by helping more people out on identifying the faces of
mitosis. This would be helpful because our overall calculation would
be accurate.