Lab for Section 5.1: Approximating and Computing Area

Here's our specific question:

How do we estimate the relative energy generated by the typical leaves under the three fertilizer treatments:

• water,
• industrial-fertilizer, and
• urine-fertilized

over the course of the days show in the figure below?

How do we get to an answer using mathematics?

• How is this energy related to
  • leaf area
  • time?

• Presumably we're going to want to compute an area under a curve (since that's what we're supposed to be approximating and computing here!)....

• Some aids for your discussion:
  • Here's the paper, if you want to investigate this further! -- and a local copy
  • Now here's the data that I've extracted from the graph, as a table:

    day urine industrial water 15 51 51 26 22 86 103 51 29 291 403 223 36 506 686 454 43 711 883 557 50 883 951 651 57 986 969 737 64 1037 994 789 71 1071 1011 797