Week 11

I submitted a report of all that had been done so far to Janyn. I reviewed my own report and learnt a few things.
In the case of intravenous injection, drying is a big threat to the survival of the cabbage but for the sake of experiments, i.e. to find more “space” inside the veins for the injected solution, the leaf was made to dry. Nevertheless, the veins did not react to the solutions unlike the surface, which showed the results.

The movement of ions in all these experiments is by a process called diffusion. Diffusion is the movement of molecules from a region of higher concentration to a region of lower concentration. In other words, ions move from the solution to the leaf.

Generally, an acid is a substance which forms H+ ions (a hydrogen atom with its electron missing - it actually sticks to a water molecule forming H3O+) which are very reactive and is the reason that acids will react with so many things. A pH indicator is just a molecule that will temporarily react with H+ ions and change color, but if the H+ ions disappear it will change back. A base is a substance which removes H+ ions from or adds OH- ions to a solution.

pH is just a measure of how many H+ ions are present in a solution. So as we change the solution, depending on the H+ ions, the concentration changes, thereby the pH changes. Hence, there is a color change.

The red cabbage leaf, in general, has water in its veins already. In most of my experiments, these water molecules were not removed completely or were not removed at all. So, better methods should be employed than just exposing them to heat or the sun.

There is a slight difference in clarity between the pictures of the leaf and the leaf itself in reality. The pre-dominance of the changes are not very clear. Since all the pictures were taken using a hand phone of 2 megapixels, the clarity and quality of the picture is very low. The use of a digital camera could have been better!

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