Student 1 of 2

Practical 7.1 Measuring the rate of oxygen uptake

Purpose Safety

• To demonstrate the uptake of oxygen in Wear eye protection when handling soda lime.
respiration. Soda lime is corrosive. Do not handle directly:
• To measure the rate at which an organism use a spatula.
respires.

Respirometers
Respirometers range from relatively simple pieces of equipment used in school science
labs with seeds or invertebrates, to elaborate devices the size of a room used to measure
respiration rates in humans living near-normal lives over a period of several days. In this
practical you will be using a very simple respirometer, while considering the advantages of
some of the slightly more complex ones.

Procedure

You will need:

• Respirometer (see diagram • Soda lime • Solvent (to remove the marker)
below) • Coloured liquid • Cotton wool
• 5 g of an actively respiring • Dropping pipette • Stopclock
organism • Permanent OHT marker pen • Eye protection

  1 Assemble the apparatus as shown in the diagram below.

syringe scale

three-way tap

glass tubing

1 cm3 pipette or glass tube coloured liquid

small organisms

gauze

soda lime

A simple respirometer

  2 Place 5 g of maggots or peas into the test tube and replace the bung.

Edexcel practical materials created by Salters-Nuffield Advanced Biology, ©University of   York Science Education Group.

37
 2 of 2 Student

Practical 7.1 (cont.) Measuring the rate of oxygen uptake

  3 Introduce a drop of marker fluid into the pipette or glass tube using a dropping pipette.
Open the connection (three-way tap) to the syringe and move the fluid to a convenient
place on the pipette (i.e. towards the end of the scale that is furthest from the test tube).
  4 Mark the starting position of the fluid on the pipette tube with a permanent OHT pen.
  5 Isolate the respirometer by closing the connection to the syringe and the atmosphere and
immediately start the stopclock. Mark the position of the fluid on the pipette at 1 minute
intervals for 5 minutes.
  6 At the end of 5 minutes open the connection to the outside air.
  7 Measure the distance travelled by the liquid during each minute (the distance from one
mark to the next on your pipette).
  If your tube does not have volumes marked onto it you will need to convert the distance
moved into volume of oxygen used. (Remember the volume used 5 pr2 3 distance
moved, where r 5 the radius of the hole in the pipette.)
  9 Record your results in a suitable table.
10 Calculate the mean rate of oxygen uptake during the 5 minutes.

Questions
  1 Why did the liquid move? Explain in detail what happens to the oxygen molecules, the
carbon dioxide molecules and the pressure in the tube.
  2 It would have been better to set up a second, control tube that did not contain living
organisms but had everything else the same.
a What could cause a movement of the liquid in the control tube towards the respirometer?
b What could cause a movement of the liquid in the control tube away from the
respirometer?
c What could you do to correct your estimate of oxygen uptake if the liquid in the
control had moved too?

Extension
  3 The diagram below and Figure 7.24 on page 148 of A2 Biology show two other types of
respirometer. What advantages and disadvantages do these have compared to the one
you are using?
soda
lime drop of
liquid

wire organism to capillary

mesh be studied tube
A very simple respirometer

  4 Design an experiment to investigate the effect of different temperatures on the rate of

oxygen uptake in maggots. Remember that the maggots will need time to acclimatise to
each new temperature.

Edexcel practical materials created by Salters-Nuffield Advanced Biology, ©University of   York Science Education Group.

38