• Question: what is photosythesis ???????????

    Asked by cr21 to Amy, Karen, Sarah, Vijay, Will on 8 Jun 2012. This question was also asked by dazza90king100j.
    • Photo: Vijay Yadav

      Vijay Yadav answered on 8 Jun 2012:

      A process by which plants use sunlight to synthesize their food.

    • Photo: Amy Birch

      Amy Birch answered on 8 Jun 2012:

      Plants are able to capture sunlight and convert this into energy so that they can grow. Basically, photo = light, synthesis = make food!

    • Photo: Sarah Martin

      Sarah Martin answered on 8 Jun 2012:

      Photosynthesis is a chemical reaction in plants, algae and some bacteria. They need light, carbon dioxide (CO2 in the air) and water (H2O in wet soil) and sunlight for this. The reaction adds the hydrogen (H) from water to the carbon dioxide, and removes an oxygen, resulting in CH2O (otherwise known as starch or sugar), oxygen (O2) and leftover water (H2O). You can check that the two sides of the reaction add up yourself here:

      *two CO2* + four H2O + plenty of light → *two CH2O* + two O2 + two H2O

      Here are some more facts about photosynthesis:
      – it produces six times more energy each day than the power consumption of all humans on Earth together!
      – all carbon inside you (all your muscles!) used to be CO2 in the air, and has been put into organic form by plants over millions of years, for you to use now.
      – without photosynthesis, we wouldn’t have oxygen in our atmosphere – about 2,000 million years ago, photosynthetic bacteria appeared and turned the atmosphere into 21% oxygen for us to breathe!

    • Photo: Karen Reed

      Karen Reed answered on 8 Jun 2012:

      its how plants take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and use engery from the sun to make energy in the form of sugars which the plant then uses to grow. I don’t think I can top the comprehensive answer by Sarah 🙂

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