Science - How Water travels through plants

In Science this week we investigated how water travels through plants.
We learned that water travels from the roots to the leaves through vessels called Xylem vessels.

First we added some food colouring to the water and left the celery in the water for a few hours. We could see where the water traveled up through the plant because of the red colour.

Next we split the stem of a white flower in half and left one side in clear water and the other side in coloured water. We observed that the red coloured water traveled up only one side of the stem and coloured only one half of the flower. This tells us that the vessels that carry the water through the plant are in a straight line.

 Finally we covered different sides of the leaves of a plant with vaseline and then sealed a plastic bag around them. This was  to investigate whether the stomata (which are tiny holes that allow water to leave the plant) are on the top or the underside of the leaves. We found that the  leaves where the underside were covered in vaseline did not produce any condensation on the plastic bag because the stomata were blocked. So we discovered that the stomata are on the underside of the leaves. The process by which water leaves the plant through the stomata is called transpiration.