Source: Science, April 1999 Article: "Leaves in the Dark See Light.", Fayer, Christine H., Norter, Graham.
Summary: Going into this article, I knew that photosynthesis could not occur without light. I did not, however, know that too much light could prevent photosynthesis. With an over-abundance of light, the leaves can be "sunburned", with this damage to the leaf, photosynthesis cannot occur. Because this was something new to me, I think that this bit of the article is the most important part to me.
Critique: A: The author wrote very informatively, but rather boring. While everything that was meant to be gotten across, got across, it was done so uninterestingly and bland.
B: Besides learning that excess light will damage the process of photosynthesis, I also learned that when the process is damaged, the rest of the plant will develop a resistance against this occurring again. It does so by implicating various diffusable signal molecules to spread the news of attack.
Ball-and-stick model of the hydrogen peroxide mole...
Structure of hydrogen peroxide
Hydrogen peroxideAnother bit of information that was new to me was that hydrogen peroxide was used in plants. Hydrogen peroxide is a diffusable long-lived oxygen species that helps in systemic adaptation of a plant submitted to excess light. The hydrogen peroxide could then originate in the chloroplasts of the exposed leaves.
C: If I were to change the article, I would have the information presented in a much more interesting way. Also, instead of making it sound as if the article was written by geniuses (which it no doubt was) I would make it more understandable and appealing to the larger mass of people who are not as academically blessed as the people who wrote this article. If the article was aimed for an intellectual group, then it was written very well.
D: This article gets all the information across...