Lab #18 – The Celery Experiment

Problem

How does a plant get water from its roots to its leaves?

  

Hypothesis 

Materials

Celery

Celery seeds

Food coloring

Water

Plastic cup

Scissors

Ruler

Hand lens

Procedure

1.          Make observations of your celery seeds in the Results.

2.          Make observations of your celery stalk in the Results.

3.          Cut about 2.5 cm off the bottom of the celery stalk and make observations on the celery stalk’s cross section.

4.          Fill up a plastic cup with 250 ml of water and add two drops of food coloring.  Put your celery stalk, cross section down and leaves up, into the cup of colored water. 

5.          Make observations on your celery stalk experiment.  Make sure to include color and other details such as height, number of leaves, width of cross section, etc.

 Results

Observations on the celery seed	10X
(half page)	(half page)

  

Observations on the celery stalk	10X

Observations on the celery stalk’s cross section	10X

Observations on the celery stalk in colored water	10X

 Analysis

1) What happened to your celery stalk overnight?

2) How do you know that the water reached the top of the plant (celery stalk)?

3) Look for small circles at the bottom of the stalk that are the color of the food coloring you used. (These circles are xylem, the tubes that carry water up the plant.) Draw pictures and make observations about the xylem in your celery.

  

Observations on the celery stalk in colored water

  

Conclusion