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Biology journal Cambridge IGCSE 0610

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Biology Chemistry Physics

How plants make food

•••

What this model shows

The leaf colours come from a teaching model of the expected results, not from real leaves. Real leaves vary: a destarched leaf may keep a little starch, and the blue-black is often patchy.

The 2 days in the cupboard, the 24 hours in the light and the minutes of each test run much faster than real time. The cells in the magnifier are schematic, not to scale.

Reduce motion (on in your system settings)

Equipment

dark cupboard

plant AA

plant B · variegatedB

boiling water

ethanol in hot water · no flameethanol · no flame

warm water

iodine

Step 1 of 24 · Check the plants are destarched

Predict

What does a leaf need to make starch? First, check the starting point. Each leaf is tested for starch in four steps: boiling water, hot ethanol, warm water, then iodine.Both plants spent 2 days in a dark cupboard. Will a leaf from the dark show starch?

Your results table fills as you test each leaf.

Equipment

Plant A (green leaves)

A potted plant with green leaves. It spent 2 days in the dark cupboard, so its leaves used up the starch they had stored: it is destarched.

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Biology journal

Cambridge IGCSE Biology 0610 (2026–2028) · for pupils aged 14–16 and their teachers.

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