To investigate how surface area affects the rate of transpiration of leaves.

For the method we are going to use to see if surface area affects the size of a leaf we are going make sure that we keep the leaves in the same conditions at all time, because light, wind or temperature might affect it. So we are keeping the leaves away from the window and we also will shut the windows, but we can’t do much about that so we will presume that the temperature will be kept constant. I think that our results will show that surface area will not make any difference to the amount perspired, even if a bigger leaf might have more chlorophyll. I think that this will happen because I think that the even if one leaf perspires faster in the end they would have perspired the same amount.

I took 3 leaves of different shapes and took down their mass; we took their mass on a weighing scale of two decimal points as it is more accurate. We then hanged them up on a threat with a peg. The thread was hold up by two stands and we let them be for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes we took the 3 leaves down and took down their mass again. We did this 3 times, so we have 3 readings. All the way through we made sure that the leaves were held at a distance so that if they did touched it might have affected our readings. We only could do 3 readings as we only had a double lesson to do this experiment and if we weren’t in the lesson we couldn’t have controlled the experiment.

This is a diagram to show how our equipment was set up:

This is a table to show my results:

We only did one reading as we couldn’t repeat this experiment as it is impossible to have the same leaf with the same amount of surface area, and the conditions would have to be the same.