Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hi, my daughter is in seventh grade and is doing a science project/experiment on factors that affect transpiration in plants. Her teacher was no help at all in giving her or parents any tools to find an appropriate science project. She told us to Google transpiration and find a project along those lines. She approved my daughter to test the effects if any that wind, temperature, and sunlight had on transpiration.In order to see transpiration take place,we bagged up some leaves of several Ivy plants.This was the recommendation of our local garden center. She placed them in the areas and conditions she wanted them.It has been 24 hours, And transpiration has not taken place in any of them. We don’t know what we’re doing wrong. I googled how to place the bag over the leaves of the plant and tie it at the bottom, etc.. We were hoping to see some fog come up in the plastic bag or droplets of water and nothing has happened. Do we need to give it more time? It being winter and in Northern Virginia, there’s not too many plans to buy/choose from.Her project is due February 19. Yes, we did get a little bit of a late start but I’m afraid we’re going to run out of time and I don’t know what we’re doing wrong as far as placing the bags and waiting for transpiration to happen. Any tips or advice would be appreciated.

Hello, transpiration really is a cool topic! For this experiment the cold weather and lack of sunlight in correspondence, is proven to have negative effects on the transpiration process. It seems like her set up is correct based on the information provided, but due to the weather you really shouldn’t see too much transpiration. When a plant is in the dark transpiration generally does not occur or if it does in very small quantities(so it being winter really doesn’t help with the process).Before closing up the bag over the plant, did you make sure there was moisture in the soil? Also,the experiment didn’t necessarily go wrong, she was able to attain the information that the conditions were all not ideal for transpiration to take effect. So it still counts as a valid experiment.