Experiment to show phototropism.(shortly).
Answers
Answer:
the movement of shoot towards light source when kept in a dark room
Explanation:
experiment to test how plants are able to see light. In this experiment, we’ll recreate what he did, and at the end we’ll dive further into the science.
Darwin's Phototropism experiment cartoon
Materials
3 small cups full of soil
Tape, a marker, and 3 sticky notes
Medium-sized box (such as a shoebox or a storage cube)
12 corn seeds
Aluminum foil
Small cookie sheet that fits inside the box (or another sheet of aluminum foil)
1 Straw
Water
Procedure
Plant four corn seeds in each of the soil cups. Make sure they’re evenly spaced, and plant them just a half inch under the dirt.
Create labels for each of the following using a sticky note, and stick to one of each soil cup:
Control
Tip
Base
Water the cups, and dump out any excess water (be careful not to tip the soil and seeds out). Place the cups on the cookie sheet or aluminum foil. This will prevent moisture and dirt from soaking through the box.
Place the cups/cookie sheet setup inside of the box. Make sure it’s open on one side so that light is coming in from an angle. Place in a windowsill, with the open side facing the sun. (You might need to stack some books underneath it to support it, if your windowsill isn’t very wide.)
Make four of each type of light-exclusion device:
Shoot cap: Cut a small 2″ x 3″ square of aluminum foil. Wrap it around the tip of a straw to create a small, closed-ended metal cap, and slide it off. This will be placed over the tip of the growing shoot to cover any light coming in to the tip.
Base sleeve: Cut a small 1/2″ x 3″ square of aluminum foil. Wrap it around the middle of a straw so it creates a small open-ended 1/2″ tall tube, and slide it off. This will be placed around the growing shoot so that it can grow through it.
Check the cups each day. Once they send up a shoot about half an inch high, place either a shoot cap (on Tip seedlings) or a base sleeve (on Base seedlings) around them, depending on which cup they’re in. The control cup will get neither of the light exclusion devices. The seedlings might grow at different rates, so be sure to check each day to put the caps/sleeves on as needed. They grow fast once they germinate!
Continue to water the seedlings as needed.
Check the seedlings after a week. What has happened? Compare the seedlings with the caps and the sleeves to the control seedlings. Are any of them growing in certain directions?
How did the seedlings “see” the light?
If the experiment worked correctly, you should have noticed that the seedlings that were covered with caps at the tip grew straight up, while the control seedlings and the seedlings with the bases covered bent towards the light. This is phototropism in action.
Darwin correctly concluded that plants are able to “see” light using the tips of the plant shoots, rather than through the stalks. It wasn’t until a bit later that scientists figured out exactly why that was, though.
It turns out that plants are able to grow by using hormones such as auxins and gibberellins. Auxin in particular tells individual cells to reach out and grow longer, like Stretch Armstrong. It’s one of the ways that plants grow taller. Normally, plants growing with an unshaded light source will grow straight up towards the sun because auxin is evenly distributed all around the shoot.
But when the light is heavily shaded and comes in from an angle, something interesting happens. Auxin starts to concentrate on the shaded side of the plant instead, and as a result, the cells on the sunny side stay the same size but the cells on the shaded side grow longer. This causes the plant to tip and grow towards the light.