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Children’s Page
Increase your Knowledge:
Photosynthesis
Plants obtain their energy directly from sunlight, using a substance
called chlorophyll to capture the energy. Chlorophyll is bright green and
it is packed away inside leaves. When sunlight shines on a leaf,
chlorophyll soaks it up and then passes on the energy, so that it can be
used to combine water and carbon dioxide to make glucose (oxygen is
produced as a by-product and is released through the leaves).
Plants use glucose as a fuel and they can also turn it
into hundreds of other substances, including sticky sugars, floury starch
and building materials that make some kinds of wood such as ebony and
greenheart almost as hard as metal. Over many years, some plants grow 140
meters tall and end up weighing more than 1000 tonnes - thanks to energy
collected from the Sun.
Animals cannot carry out photosynthesis, but they depend
on it for survival. This is because photosynthesis allows plants to grow
to become food for plant eating animals, which in turn are food for
hunters. Without photosynthesis, the food chain would break down.
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