Write the names of your selected plants; (the ones you chose for module 1)
Describe the process of transpiration including answering the following questions:
How does water move through semipermeable membranes?
How do nutrients move across semipermeable membranes?
What is meant by “active” transport?
What is meant by “passive” transport?
What are enzymes? And what role do they play in cell transport?
Ok – so that part had a lot of technical/”sciency” stuff. So let’s do something way simpler, something that you probably remember from elementary school. And though it is very simple, now that you know more about plant structures and water and nutrient transport through plant cells – it may make even more sense than when you did the experiment the first time! The celery we use will serve as a “model organism” but the process you see here is the same one that takes place in the plants you have added to your yard.
Part 2:
Take out a medium to large size glass and fill it half-full with water.
Place the glass on a flat surface.
Add 6 to 8 drops of food coloring to the water.
Stir to mix well.
Take your stalk of celery and cut off about ½ inch from the non-leafy end.
Place the stalk into the glass of water.
Take a “before picture” of your experiment (you will be sending your pictures as a part of your Module 2 submission).
On a Word document entitled Module 2: write down what you think will happen (a hypothesis) for this experiment based on your understanding of plant structures and movement and the movement of water and nutrients.
Leave the experiment in place for at least several hours or even overnight.
While you are waiting on your celery experiment – we will use the diffusion and osmosis simulation of this biology simulations website to study how molecules or solutes move across semipermeable membranes. Before we hit “run” on the simulation, let’s first notice that this simulation is on a beaker and not an animal or plant cell. I would like you to use your imagination and think of what a beaker with a semipermeable membrane in this simulation represents?. For a moment, let the semipermeable membrane be a cell membrane, and the two sides of the beaker be the inside and outside of a cell. Ok? Also, did you notice that this simulation has solutes of different sizes? Do the size of the solutes matter when we think of permeable membranes? On top of solute size, what else is important to consider in this experiment?
