Determining the Effect of pH Values on the Carbohydrate Concentration in Hedera Ivy
As the increase in industry has remained, acid rain has become more of a problem and pH has become a very important factor around the world. Acid rain has a very low pH value, and can easily kill off plants. This type of rain can easily hit any farm and potentially harm the crops. The goal of our experiment was to determine if the pH values of water used to water Hedera Ivy resulted in a difference in carbohydrate concentration, which would affect the nutritional value of a plant. To test against the ill effects of acid rain, we subjected the Hedera Ivy to a pH of 4, which is approximately the same as acid rain. Normal rain is approximately a pH of 7 so we watered another plant with water at the pH of 7. Lastly to test if acid rain was the only factor that could effect carbohydrate concentration, we watered the plant with a pH of 10, a much lower acidity which potentially would effect plant growth. In order to perform the experiment, we watered the plants for two weeks before experimentation, and then we placed the leaves in a blender to liquefy the material. After the leaves were blended, we centrifuged the solution in order to get rid of the plant's cell walls which allowed us to get the data. A titration was then performed in order to get the actual concentration of each solution. In order to test which of our data was significant, we used a two-sample t test. The only significant differences that we got from our experiment were between the plants watered with a pH of 4 and a pH of 10. The p-value obtained from that set was .000003. This proves that there is a significant difference between the concentration of plants watered with the pH values of 4 and 10, and that there was a very small chance that the data received was from random chance.
Research Done By:
Adam Katlein
L'Anse Creuse High School
Andrea Prentkowski
Cousino High School
Warren Consolidated Schools