Hello Ms. Leschine, were not able to measure weight gain because the growth was not enough to give us accurate measures of weight. Instead, we based the productivity solely on visual observations. Before measuring, we shook the cap containing water and algae so that the algae was spread distributed in the water, then we let the water evaporate and based our observations on the darkness of the green of the algae with darker greens representing more algae.

Thank you Mr. Drayton. Unfortunately we have not tried any algae recipes, although I will definitely look up a few now that you have mentioned it. As to what wavelengths of light are favored, we believe that blue light, which has shorter wavelengths are slightly favored over the longer wavelength red light. But neither light is capable of maximizing the efficiency of the photosynthetic pigments in the algae cells because there are highly specialized pigments that only absorb one wavelength. So in order to allow all pigments to be activated, helping the cell create more sugars, white light, which contains every wavelength should be used.

Hello, Ms. Puttick. Carbon enters the system as carbon dioxide and leaves in the same form, so we believe that the net increase of carbon in the atmosphere would be either zero or very close to it. If the algae is grown in open air, there would be no carbon released in the production of algae. But in our case, white light requires energy, which means carbon production. But the energy required to produce light is very minimal, so we do not believe that it will upset the amount of energy saved from using biofuels. But if this project was to be scaled up, we would also need to factor in the energy required to run the facilities, pump carbon dioxide, and other processes. But according to the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, it is estimated that the total impact of CO2 on global warming is reduced by almost 80% by using biodiesel. So even if huge facilities and large amounts of energy are used to produce great amounts of algae, it still should be enough that there would still be a net decrease in the emission of carbon dioxide.

Thank you for your question. The carbon first enters the system when the algae absorbs it in the photosynthetic process, in which carbon dioxide, water, and light are used to make sugars for the plant. The plant then uses the sugar to produce energy to grow and make lipids, which will be used to make biofuel. Lipids are organic molecules that contain carbon and after treatment, can be used to power engines. The burning of this biofuel then releases energy and carbon into the atmosphere. So in a way, the flow of energy is tied to the flow of carbon. The carbon flows in as carbon dioxide, transitions to lipids for a while, and flows out as carbon dioxide. Chemical energy is created in the plant from cellular respiration and is released when the biofuel is burned and is turned into mechanical energy to power our engines.

Thank you for your questions. We believe that temperature may also have an effect. Besides that, the amount of carbon dioxide exposure and the amount of light all affect the growth. We were not able to measure the actual weight of the groups, but from our visual observations, it was determined that the white light group clearly had more growth, followed by blue light, followed by red light. If we repeated this experiment, I believe that we would get the same results because we believe that only white light, which contains all frequencies of light is able to maximize the photosynthetic productivity of algae by activating all of the photosynthetic pigments.