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.
 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.
 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.
 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.
 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.
 Photosynthesis
needs:
 Photosynthesis produces:
 Why is photosynthesis important?