The prevailing theory at the time was that plants grew by eating soil, and van Helmont devised a clever investigation to test this idea. He weighed a willow tree and weighed dry soil. He planted the tree, watered it and then left it for 5 years. He then re-weighed the tree, which had increased in mass by over 12 stones. He dried the soil and weighed it, showing that the soil was almost the same mass. He concluded that the tree grew by drinking water.
What did John Woodward discover about photosynthesis?
In a series of experiments over as many as 77 days, Woodward measured the water consumed by plants. For example, one plant showed a mass gain of about 1 gram, while Woodward had added a total of almost 76,000 grams of water during the 77 days of plant growth - this was a typical result.
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