Notes

photosynthesis is where the plants take in carbon dioxide and give out sugar(food for the plant) and oxygen. plants need 3 things to make food carbon dioxide,water,air.

What is Photosynthesis?

Photosynthesis may sound like a big word, but it's actually pretty simple. You can divide it into two parts: "Photo" is the Greek word for "Light," and "synthesis," is the Greek word for "putting together," which explains what photosynthesis is. It is using light to put things together. You may have noticed that all animals and humans eat food, but plants don't eat anything. 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, since they can make their food anywhere as long as they have three things.

The three things are Carbon Dioxide, Water, and Light. You have probably heard of Carbon dioxide. It is a chemical that is in the air. Every time you breathe in, you breath in a bunch of chemicals in the air, including oxygen and carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is also one of the chemicals that causes global warming. But we'll get to that in a little bit. Here's what photosynthesis looks like:

Carbon Dioxide + Water + Light ----> Sugar + Oxygen

Plants breathe, just like us. They even have little openings that can look like mouths, but they are too small for us to see without a microscope. When we breathe in, we want to breath in oxygen. Plants want to breathe in Carbon Dioxide. Plants also drink. This is why you need to water plants or they will die. They use their roots to suck water up into their bodies, and their little mouths to breath in the carbon dioxide. Once they have both of these things, all they need is light. Leaves are made up of a bunch of tiny cells, where this happens. Inside the cells are tiny little things called chloroplasts. Chloroplasts are what makes leaves green, and they are also what takes the carbon dioxide, the water, and the light, and turns them into sugar and oxygen.

The sugar is then used by the plants for food, and the oxygen is breathed out into the atmosphere. This process as a whole is "photosynthesis."