11.2 EARLY EXPERIMENTS

It is interesting to learn about those simple experiments that led to a gradual development in our understanding of photosynthesis. Joseph Priestley ( - ) in performed a series of experiments that revealed the essential role of air in the growth of green plants. Priestley, you may recall, discovered oxygen in . Priestley observed that a candle burning in a closed space – a bell jar, soon gets extinguished (Figure .

a, b, c, d). Similarly, a mouse would soon suffocate in a closed space. He concluded that a burning candle or an animal that breathe the air, both somehow, damage the air. But when he placed a mint plant in the same bell jar, he found that the mouse stayed alive and the candle continued to burn.

Priestley hypothesised as follows: Plants restore to the air whatever breathing animals and burning candles remove. Can you imagine how Priestley would have conducted the experiment using a candle and a plant? Remember, he would need to rekindle the candle to test whether it burns after a few days. How many different ways can you think of to light the candle without disturbing the set-up?

Using a similar setup as the one used by Priestley, but by placing it once in the dark and once in the sunlight, Jan Ingenhousz ( - ) showed that sunlight is essential to the plant process that somehow purifies the air fouled by burning candles or breathing animals. Ingenhousz in an elegant experiment with an aquatic plant showed that in bright sunlight, small bubbles were formed around the green parts while in the dark they did not. Later he identified these bubbles to be of oxygen. Hence he showed that it is only the green part of the plants that could release oxygen.

(a) (c) (b) (d) Figure . Priestley’s experiment It was not until about that Julius von Sachs provided evidence for production of glucose when plants grow. Glucose is usually stored as starch. His later studies showed that the green substance in plants (chlorophyll as we know it now) is located in special bodies (later called chloroplasts) within plant cells.

He found that the green parts in plants is where glucose is made, and that the glucose is usually stored as starch. Now consider the interesting experiments done by T.W Engelmann ( – ). Using a prism he split light into its spectral components and then illuminated a green alga, Cladophora, placed in a suspension of aerobic bacteria. The bacteria were used to detect the sites of O2 evolution.

He observed that the bacteria accumulated mainly in the region of blue and red light of the split spectrum. A first action spectrum of photosynthesis was thus described. It resembles roughly the absorption spectra of chlorophyll a and b (discussed in section . ).

By the middle of the nineteenth century the key features of plant photosynthesis were known, namely, that plants could use light energy to make carbohydrates from CO2 and water. The empirical equation representing the total process of photosynthesis for oxygen evolving organisms was then understood as: