The Wonders of Photosynthesis

1. The Wonders of Photosynthesis

2. What is Photosynthesis?!?! • Think of a plant as a sun-powered, food-making factory. • The process by which plants make food is photosynthesis. • “Photo” means light and “synthesis” means to make. • This explains that photosynthesis is using light to put things together.  • Photosynthesis is how plants eat.  They use this process to make their own food.  Since they don't have to move around to find food plants stay in one place. Plants can make their food anywhere as long as they have three things: Carbon Dioxide, Water, and Light.

3. What do plants need? • Green plants are producers. • This means that they can survive without animals. • They need simple things like carbon-dioxide and water and can make complex things like sugar. • Sunlight provides the energy that powers the entire process. • When plants are in sunlight they can make a sugar called glucose. The sunlight gets trapped in a chemical called Chlorophyll. • Chlorophyll is what makes the plant green. • When plants use carbon dioxide and water to make glucose there is a lot of oxygen left over.

4. What do plants need? • Like all organisms, plants need a steady supply of energy to grow and develop, respond, and reproduce. • Some of the food made by plants supplies the energy for these activities. • The excess food is stored by the plants in their roots, stems, or leaves. • When you are eating fruits and vegetables you are eating the plant’s stored food. • Animals that consume plants also make use of this energy, as do those that consume those that consume plants, and so on to the top of the food chain.

5. What happens with the left over? • Plants can make enough glucose on a sunny day to last them through the night and through lots of cloudy dark days, but they cannot store up lots of glucose. • What they do is convert the extra glucose into starch. • When they need to use the energy, they can turn the starch back into glucose. • Starch can be stored in leaves or other parts of the plant. Plants can also turn glucose into sucrose: this is a sugar carried around the plant in special tubes called phloem.

6. How does photosynthesis help us? • As important a job as making all of the world's food is, there's another vital function that photosynthesis performs: It generates the oxygen that oxygen-breathing animals need to survive. But here we animals repay the favor. We exhale the carbon dioxide that plants need for photosynthesis.

7. Photosynthesis Equation Carbon dioxide+ Water  light energy = Sugar+ Oxygen

8. Review items: • Photosynthesis needs: • Photosynthesis produces: • Why is photosynthesis important?