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978-1-107-62606-5 – Cambridge Checkpoint Science

Mary Jones Diane Fellowes-Freeman and David Sang
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1.1 Plant organs

Photosynthesis

Photosynthesis is the way that plants make food. They use carbon dioxide and water
to make glucose and oxygen.
Photosynthesis is a chemical reaction. We can summarise it using a word equation:
carbon dioxide + water → glucose + oxygen

Energy transfer
The photosynthesis reaction needs a supply of energy to make it happen. This energy
comes from light. During photosynthesis, the plant’s leaves absorb the energy of light.
The energy is stored in the glucose that is made. The glucose is a store of chemical
potential energy.

cell wall

cell surface
membrane

cytoplasm

vacuole chloroplast containing chlorophyll

nucleus

Photosynthesis happens inside the chloroplasts in a palisade cell like this one.

Questions
1 Think back to (remember) what you have already learnt about photosynthesis.
a Where do plants get carbon dioxide from?
b Where do plants get water from?
2 Explain why photosynthesis only takes place inside chloroplasts.

Storing carbohydrates
Glucose is a sugar. Sugars belong to a group of chemicals called carbohydrates.
Plants usually make much more glucose than they need to use immediately. They
store some of it to use later. But they do not store it as glucose. Glucose is soluble in
water, which makes it difficult to store inside a cell.
Instead, the plant changes some of the glucose into a different kind of carbohydrate
– starch. A starch molecule is made of thousands of glucose molecules linked
together in a long chain. Starch molecules are too big to dissolve in water. They stay
as insoluble grains, inside the chloroplasts in the plant cell.

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Mary Jones Diane Fellowes-Freeman and David Sang
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1.1 Photosynthesis

Activity 1.1
Testing a leaf for starch
You will remember that we can test for starch using 1
iodine solution. But just adding iodine solution to
a leaf won’t work, because the starch is inside the
leaf cells. Iodine solution can’t get through the cell
membranes of the leaf cells.
1 Boil some water in a beaker. Add a leaf to the
boiling water. This will break down the cell
membranes around the leaf cells. 3
2 Turn off your Bunsen burner or spirit burner.
This is important because you are going to use
ethanol in the next step, and ethanol is very
flammable. Using forceps (tweezers), remove the
leaf from the water. Be gentle – it will be very soft
and easily torn.
3 Collect some ethanol in a test tube. Stand the test
tube in the beaker of very hot water. Put the leaf
into the ethanol. You will see the green colour
(chlorophyll) coming out of the leaf, into
the ethanol.
4 When you think most of the colour has come out, 5
take the leaf out of the ethanol and dip it into the
water to soften it. Spread the leaf out on a tile.
5 Now you can add iodine solution to the leaf.
If the leaf contains any starch, it will turn
blue-black.
Questions
A1 Explain why the leaf needed to be boiled before testing with iodine solution.
A2 Suggest why it was useful to remove the green colour from the leaf, before
testing it with iodine solution.
A3 Describe two things that you did in step 2 to reduce the risk of anyone
being hurt.
A4 Explain why leaves often contain starch.

Summary
• Photosynthesis is the production of glucose and oxygen, by
reacting water and carbon dioxide, using energy from light.
• Plants oft en change some of the glucose into starch, for storage.
• Before testing a leaf for starch, you need to boil it to break down the
cell membranes.

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1.2 Mineral salts for plants

Farmers and gardeners often add fertilisers

to the soil where their crops are growing. The
fertilisers provide mineral salts, which make
the plants grow larger and healthier. Although
fertilisers are expensive, the cost to farmers is
outweighed by the extra money they can get for
their crop.

What are fertilisers?

Fertilisers contain mineral salts. These are
substances that plants normally get from the soil.
But often the soil does not contain enough of
some kinds of mineral salts, which stops the plants This farmer in Indonesia is giving fertiliser to his
growing as large and strong as they could. growing rice plants.

Plants need many different kinds of mineral salts.

Two of the most important ones are nitrate and
magnesium.
Nitrate is needed so that the plant can make
proteins. You’ll remember that proteins are
nutrients that living organisms need for making
new cells. A plant that has not got enough nitrate
can’t make enough proteins, so it cannot make
enough new cells to grow well.
Nitrate is also needed to make chlorophyll. If a
plant does not have enough nitrate, it will become
yellow instead of green.

Plants that are short of nitrate

are stunted (small) and yellow.

Magnesium is also needed for making

chlorophyll. So a shortage of magnesium
makes plant leaves go yellow.

This tomato leaf is showing symptoms of magnesium

deficiency.

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1.2 Mineral salts for plants

Questions
1 Give two examples of mineral salts that are needed by plants.
A+I 2 Explain why a plant that does not have enough magnesium will not grow well.
3 Think about what you know about plant roots. How do plants absorb mineral
salts from the soil?

Activity 1.2
Investigating the effect of fertilisers on plant growth
Duckweed is a tiny plant that grows on the
surface of ponds and lakes. Each plant is made
up of a leaf-like structure, often with tiny roots
hanging down into the water.
If you add a single duckweed plant to some
water, it will produce new plants as it grows.
You can measure how fast the duckweed grows
by counting how many plants there are after a
certain period of time.
Plan an investigation to find out how fertiliser
A frog surrounded by duckweed plants.
affects the rate of growth of duckweed. Your
teacher will show you the plants and the
fertiliser that you can use.
Think about these questions:
• What you will change in your experiment?
• How will you change this?
• What variables will you keep the same?
• What will you measure?
• When you will measure this?
• Will you do repeats in your experiment? If so, how many?
When your teacher has checked your plan, you can set up your experiment. You
will have to be patient, as it may take several weeks before you have your results.
Record your results clearly. You may be able to draw a graph to display them.

Summary
• Plants need nitrate to make proteins, which are needed to make
new cells for growth.
• Plants need magnesium to make chlorophyll.

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1.3 Plants and water

Everyone knows that plants need water. If

you grow plants in pots, you need to water
them regularly.

Water for support

The photograph shows one reason why
plants need water – it helps them to stand
upright.
Plant cells contain a lot of water, especially
inside their vacuoles. A plant cell that has The plant on the left has not been watered for three
plenty of water is strong and firm. When days. The photograph on the right shows the same
all the cells in a plant are like this, they plant a few hours after it was watered.
press out against each other and make the
whole plant firm and well-supported.
When a plant cell doesn’t contain enough
water, it becomes soft and floppy. When all
the cells in a plant are like this, the plant
collapses. We say that it has wilted.

Water for transport

You may remember that plants contain
long tubes, called xylem, which transport
water from the roots up to the leaves.
There are mineral salts dissolved in the
water, and this is how they are transported
around the plant.

Water for cooling

When the water in the xylem gets into the
leaves, it spreads out through each leaf.
Some of it evaporates into the air spaces
inside the leaf.
When water evaporates, it absorbs heat
energy. This cools down the surroundings.
The water evaporating inside a plant leaf
helps to keep the plant cool. This is really
important for plants that live in very
air space stoma
hot environments. water
vapour

Most of the water that is taken up by a plant’s roots

is eventually lost from its leaves in the form of water
vapour.

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1.3 Plants and water

Water for photosynthesis

Water is one of the reactants in photosynthesis. Water combines with carbon
dioxide, inside chloroplasts, to make glucose and oxygen.
In fact, only a very small proportion of the water taken up by a plant’s roots is
used in photosynthesis.
Questions
1 Explain why a plant wilts if it is short of (lacks) water.
2 How does water help a plant to keep cool?
Water vapour diffusing
3 Water from the soil is absorbed by a plant. Eventually, it ends up in the
out of plant leaves
air as water vapour. List the parts of the plant that it passes through on helps to keep the
this journey. air moist.

Activity 1.3
Water loss from plants

1 Collect two very similar potted plants. Make sure both of them have moist
soil. Cover the two pots with plastic bags as shown in the diagrams.
2 Measure the mass of each plant in its pot, using a top pan balance. Record
this mass.
3 Each day for the next week, measure the mass of each plant in its pot
again. Try to do this at about the same time each day. Record all of your
readings in a results table.
4 When you have finished all your measurements, look carefully at the inside
of the plastic bag covering the plant. You may find little droplets of liquid.
To check if these are water, touch one of them with some blue cobalt
chloride paper. If the liquid is water, the paper will go pink.
5 Draw a line graph to display your results. You could draw two lines on the
same graph – one for each plant.
Questions
A1 What was the variable that you changed in this experiment?
A2 What variables did you keep the same?
A3 Compare the change in the mass in the two plants in their pots.
A4 Explain why the droplets of water formed on the inside of the plastic bag.
A5 Explain the reasons for the differences between the results for the
two plants.

Summary
• Plants need water for support, cooling, transport
and photosynthesis.
• Most of the water taken up by the roots eventually diff uses out of the
plant’s leaves, as water vapour.

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1.4 Flowers

The photograph shows wild flowers growing.

Many flowers are brightly coloured like this.
Why are flowers so colourful?
Flowers are brightly coloured to attract insects
and birds. They do this because the insects
and birds help plants to reproduce. Flowers
are the reproductive organs of plants.

The parts of a flower

Flowers come in all sorts of different shapes
and sizes. But you can usually find the same
parts in most flowers that you look at.
The petals are usually the most colourful
part of the flower. They attract insects or birds
to the flower. Some flowers produce scents
(smells), which also help to attract insects. Brightly coloured wild flowers.
The insects or birds feed on sweet, sugary
nectar produced at the base of the petals. They may also eat some of the pollen,
produced in the anthers. The pollen contains the male gametes of the flower.
The female gametes are inside the ovules, which are inside the ovaries.
Unlike animals, many plants produce both male gametes and female gametes.

petal

stigma

anther
style
stamen

filament

sepal

ovary
ovule

The structure of a flower.

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1.4 Flowers

Questions
1 Many people use the word ‘flower’
when they really mean ‘plant’.
Explain the difference between a
plant and a flower.
A+I 2 Insects can often smell flowers from
hundreds of metres away. Suggest
how the scent from the flowers
spreads out into the air around them.
Not all flowers produce smells that we like. This flower is a
stapelia. It has a scent like rotting meat, and attracts flies.

Activity 1.4
Investigating flower structure
You are going to take a flower apart and stick the various parts into your notebook.
1 Look carefully at your flower.
• How many sepals does it have?
• Carefully remove each of the sepals, and stick them in a neat
row in your book. Write a label to remind you what they are.
• How many petals does your flower have? What colour are they?
• Some petals have guidelines, to direct insects to where they can
find nectar at the base of the petals. Does your flower
have guidelines?
• Carefully remove each of the petals, and stick them into
your book.
3 Now look at the stamens. These are the male parts of the flower. guidelines
• How many stamens does your flower have? Can you see any pollen at the top
of them?
• Remove them carefully and stick them into your book. On one of them, label
the anther and filament.
4 Now you should only have the stigmas, styles and ovaries left. These are the
female parts of the flower.
• How many does your flower have?
• Carefully cut an ovary open. What can you see inside it?
• Stick the stigmas, styles and ovaries into your book, and label them.

Summary
• Flowers are the reproductive organs of plants.
• The male parts of a flower are the stamens. Pollen contains the male gametes.
• The female parts of a flower are the ovaries, style and stigma. Ovules contain
the female gametes.
• Petals have bright colours and strong scents to attract insects and birds.

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1.5 Pollination

Flowers are organs where sexual reproduction takes

place. You will remember that sexual reproduction
involves gametes (sex cells).
In humans, the male gametes are the sperm cells. They
can swim to find an egg.
Flowers do not have swimming sperm cells. Their male
gametes are simply nuclei inside their pollen grains. They
cannot swim.
So flowers have to use another method of getting their male
gametes to their female gametes. Many of them use insects or
birds. Some use the wind.

Pollen grains
Pollen grains are made in the anthers of flowers. Pollen grains
contain the male gametes. The yellow powder falling from
these catkins contains thousands of
lightweight pollen grains. Catkins are
made of lots of tiny flowers.

These spiky pollen grains are from a ragweed plant. Their spikes
help them to stick to insects’ bodies (magnification × 1600).

Activity 1.5
Looking at pollen grains

1 Collect a microscope and set it up with the low power objective lens over
the stage.
2 Collect a clean microscope slide. Carefully tap a little pollen from a flower
onto the centre of the slide.
3 Place the slide on the stage of the microscope. Focus on the pollen. Make a
drawing of one or two pollen grains.
4 Repeat steps 2 and 3 using pollen from a different kind of flower.
5 Describe any differences that you can see between the two types of pollen.

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1.5 Pollination

Transferring pollen grains

To help the male gametes get close to the
female gametes, pollen grains must be carried
from the anthers (where they are made) to the
stigma of a flower.
Insects often help with this. When the insect
pollen from the
comes to a flower to collect nectar, pollen gets anther rubs off
stuck onto its body. When the insect goes to onto the bee
another flower, some of the pollen rubs off
onto the stigma.
pollen sticks to
The transfer of pollen from an anther to a the stigma
stigma is called pollination.
Insects can transfer pollen from an anther to a stigma.
Many flowers are pollinated by insects
or birds. Some, for example grasses, are
pollinated by the wind. The wind blows
pollen off the anthers. Just by luck, some of
the pollen may land on the stigmas of
other flowers.

This Cape sugarbird is collecting nectar. When it

flies to another flower, it may carry pollen with it
on its feathers.

Questions
1 Where are the female gametes found in a flower?
2 Where are the male gametes found in a flower?
3 Explain why plants need help to get their male gametes to
their female gametes.
A+I 4 The table shows two differences
Insect-pollinated flowers Wind-pollinated flowers
between insect-pollinated and
wind-pollinated flowers. Suggest brightly coloured not brightly coloured
reasons for these differences. have spiky or sticky pollen have smooth pollen

Summary
• The male gametes of a flower are inside the pollen grains.
The female gametes are inside the ovules.
• The male gametes cannot move by themselves, so flowers make use of
insects, birds or the wind to move their pollen grains.
• The transfer of pollen from an anther to a stigma is called pollination.

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