Looking at Our Lunch- Post Lab Questions and Answers

Post Lab-
Today in science we will be looking at lettuce cells. I think that we will see a brick wall type of structure.  I think that we might see the tear in the leaves.  I do not think we will see the nucleus because when we looked at the elodea, we did not see it.  We will see chloroplasts (because plants perform photosynthesis)  The possible functions the cells might be photosynthesis.
_________________________________________________________________________________  Answers-
In science, we looked at lettuce leaves.  I thought it was really interesting because I thought that we would see a brick wall type structure, but we actually saw other things.  These are some notes of what we saw-
Upper Layer 40X-  We saw many shapes that were not really any particualar shape, and they were all close together, overlapping.

Upper Layer 100X-  We saw the stoma and epedermis.  There were wavy lines around it.

Lower Layer 40X-  Jigsaw shaper peices with coffee bean shaped cells scattered around, in no particular order.

Lower Layer 100X-  An oval (the coffee bean up close) with long, stretched out spaghetti like lines connected to it.

They were all very interesting to look at, especially the lower layer at 40X.
If chloroplasts were placed in darkness for a long time, I think that they would stop functioning because they need sunlight to make the food for the rest of the plant.  The plant would therefore die, because the small "kitchens" would not work.  If they were placed in light 24 hours for a couple of days, I think that the cells would not be able to rest.  They would have to constantly keep going in the heat, and some plants are not made for the heat.  The stoma would not be able to open and get water to feed to the cells.  The guard cells and stoma would not have any water to open up to if they were placed under the sun on a summer day.  The plant would dry up and die.