Results of Experiment
 

The carbon dioxide fixation set-up contained 3 "greenhouses". These were created by slicing plastic soda bottles in half, then placing equal amounts of soil and water in the bottom half of each. The first bottle, containing only soil and water served as the control. The second included the addition of one dianthus plant; the third contained 3 dianthus plants.

An initial reading of CO2 present in each bottle was taken with a CO2 probe (attached to a CBL - Calculator Based Learning device). These figures were indicative of CO2 amounts present in the atmosphere at large. The bottles were exposed to a 75 watt light source for 32 hours before final readings were measured.
 
 
 
BOTTLE #
INITIAL READING(ppm)
FINAL READING(ppm)
1
 505 
 505 
2
505
504
3
505
502
 
 

 
ANALYSIS:
 
The purpose of our experiment was to demonstrate that atmospheric CO2 can be decreased, if plants are present to uptake it. Our data showed a slight decrease in CO2; too minor, however, to be significant.
 
Variables that could have effected  the readings: 
    1)  The CO2 probe had to be moved from bottle to bottle because only one
    probe was available; this could have caused the atmospheric carbon to be
    sensed as well as the gas content in the bottle
    2) The CO2  probe did not fit snugly into the bottle, creating a situation
    that was not a closed system.
    3) It is possible that the plastic bottles used were slightly permeable to CO2,
    which could have been another inlet for atmospheric CO2.
 
Due to the short term nature of this study as well as the unsatisfactory data obtained, our results are hereby inconclusive. We  expect, however, if this experiment were repeated under corrected conditions, to be able to obtain data in concordance with our hypothesis.