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- The Great Celery Experiment - - Grow it Again - |
The
Great Celery Experiment Have you ever wondered how, or why, plants get water from down in the ground up into their leaves? This experiment will help you understand how it works.
Materials
Instructions Fill the glass half way with water. Add the food coloring to the water and stir until evenly mixed. Cut about 3cm off the bottom of the celery stalk. Stand the celery stalk in the glass, with the leaves sticking up. Wait over night. Follow up questions - Were there any changes over night? - How do you know that the water moved from the glass up into the celery? - How does water get from the ground, or in the glass, up into the leaves?. - Why do plants need water?
Further exploration Remove the celery stalk from the cup and cut another centimetre off the bottom. Look for small circles at the bottom of the stalk - they will be the color of the food coloring you used.
Those tiny circles are tubes called "xylem." Xylem are like little straws that suck up water and nutrients and carry them around the plant. Water is very important for plants. Plants need water to grow, to stand strong and tall, and to make their food.
Plant food What is plant food, and how do they get it?
Plants turn water and air into food.
1.
Water from the ground is sucked up by the roots.
2.
Carbon dioxide from the air is "breathed" in by the leaves.
3.
Energy from the sun is collected by the leaves.
4.
The energy is used to turn the water and carbon dioxide into food.
5.
The waste from making plant food is oxygen.
Animals, humans included, need oxygen to survive. So, this process is very important for plants AND animals. This amazing process, of using the sun's energy to make food, is called "photosynthesis." |
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