CO2 Uptake in Colored Leaves

In a lab on 11/2/17, We decided to measure the rate of CO2 uptake on different colored leaves to see if the color affected the CO2 uptake. We predicted that the darker colored leaves would have a lower rate of CO2 uptake because it is dying and will not go through photosynthesis at as high of a rate. We tested this by gathering different colored leaves; red, green, brown and yellow, to find the difference in the most common colored leaves. We took the mass of each leaf and then measured the CO2 levels using the CO2 probe and a lamp on high heat to get an average CO2 uptake rate for five minutes each and repeated this to get data to provide consistency. With this information we found the rate of CO2 uptake by dividing the CO2 level by the mass of the leaves. Our results provided evidence that red leaves actually yielded the highest rate of CO2 uptake which contradicted our hypothesis. However, when we ran an ANOVA test, we found that the differences in the means between the different colors were not significant (P>.05 for all values). Some weaknesses of the study could have been the time we picked the leaves and also the location we got the leaves from.