Michael’s class did an activity during their biology period. They took 2 beakers with
water and placed white petunia flowers in it. They added blue colour dye in first
beaker and red colour dye in the second beaker. They left the set up for 2-3 hours.
(i) What do you think will happen after few hours? Why?
(ii) What is the plant tissue related to the above activity?
Answers
Answer:
did not understand the question
Answer:
Key concepts
Plant biology
Capillary action
Water
Dyes
Colors
Introduction
Have you ever heard someone say, "That plant is thirsty," or "Give that plant a drink of water."? We know that all plants need water to survive, even bouquets of cut flowers and plants living in deserts. But have you ever thought about how water moves within the plant? In this activity, you'll put carnations in dyed water to figure out where the water goes. Where do you think the dyed water will travel, and what will this tell you about how the water moves in the cut flowers?
Background
Plants use water to keep their roots, stems, leaves and flowers healthy as well as prevent them from drying and wilting. The water is also used to carry dissolved nutrients throughout the plant.
Most of the time, plants get their water from the ground. This means it has to transport the water from its roots up and throughout the rest of the plant. How does it do this? Water moves through the plant by means of capillary action. Capillary action occurs when the forces binding a liquid together (cohesion and surface tension) and the forces attracting that bound liquid to another surface (adhesion) are greater than the force of gravity. Through these binding and surface forces, the plant's stem basically sucks up water—almost like drinking through a straw!
A simple way of observing capillary action is to take a teaspoon of water and gently pour it in a pool on a countertop. You'll notice that the water stays together in the pool, rather than flattening out across the countertop. (This happens because of cohesion and surface tension.) Now gently dip the corner of a paper towel in the pool of water. The water adheres to the paper and "climbs" up the paper towel. This is called capillary action.