Photosynthesis is a natural process all plants undergo to create energy from light. in a plant, photosynthesis creates oxygen as a byproduct, and cellular respiration uses oxygen to make water. the sp

Photosynthesis is a natural process all plants undergo to create energy from light. in a plant, photosynthesis creates oxygen as a byproduct, and cellular respiration uses oxygen to make water. the speed or rate of both these processes combined is called "net photosynthesis". we wanted to see if light intensity affected the rate of photosynthesis. our hypothesis was that the net rate of photosynthesis will be proportional with the intensity of the light. we cut out disks from a leaf and saturated them with a solution using a vacuum method until they all sank. after placing them is a shallow petri dish with a lamp directly above the dish, we observed how fast and how many leaves underwent photosynthesis and rose to the top of the solution. our two trials with different lamp distances showed that the closer the lamp is to the petri dish, the quicker the percent floating increased. while these results supported my hypothesis, there was not enough evidence to fully confirm the hypothesis. more trials with different variables [e.g. lamp height] would have to be performed to conclude my hypothesis.