Photosynthetic Strategies and their Consequences for Plant Community Structure
Light is often a limiting resource for plants, which can be stimulated to higher photosynthetic rates and higher growth rates by increasing the amount of light they receive. However, many plants are w...

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Crops of the Future: A Problem-Based Learning Exercise for the Laboratory
In problem-based learning (PBL), complex, real-world problems motivate students to discover interconnections between important concepts and in doing so acquire essential skills. These skills include t...

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Carbon Dioxide Uptake in Plants: A Computer-Aided Experimental System
This exercise introduces students to concepts of photosynthesis at the whole organism level and to computer utilization in biology. Changes in carbon dioxide concentration are measured in environmenta...

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Lights, Bean Plants, Action: Starch Printing, a Student Exercise
This exercise examines starch production in young bean leaves.

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Photosynthesis/Respiration in Leaf Disks
I use this lab in a two-hour introductory majors’ course, Principles of Biology II, which covers cell and molecular biology, genetics, and evolution. Over the years I have discovered that students c...

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Interactions between Photosynthesis and Respiration in an Aquatic Ecosystem
Students measure the results of respiration and photosynthesis separately, combined, and in comparison to a non-living control “ecosystem”. The living ecosystem uses only snails and water plants. Ox...

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Inexpensive Apparatus for Measuring Respiration and Photosynthesis Based on CO₂
This workshop presents a modification of a previous ABLE workshop (Winnett-Murray et al. 2000) that involved a comparison of the metabolic rates of an ectotherm (lizard) and an endotherm (mouse) at ...

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Measurement of Photosynthetic Activity in Plant Cell Fractions
Fractions of plant cells prepared by homogenization and differential centrifugation exhibit enzymatic activity. In fractions containing chloroplasts, light causes evolution of oxygen and generation of...

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Studying Photosynthesis in Hedera helix
This exercise presents a method for studying photosynthesis using the floating leaf disk assay (FLDA). It utilizes the rate at which oxygen is produced or consumed as a measure of the processes of pho...

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Extraction of Chloroplasts from Plant Tissue and Their Use in Demonstrating the Hill Reaction
Used to illustrate photosynthesis, the role of light, use of synthetic electron acceptors/donors

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