Photosynthesis Essay, Research Paper

PhotosynthesisPhotosynthesis means “putting together with light.” This takes place in chloroplasts, which have chlorophyll in them. Chlorophyll absorbs the sunlight. From sunlight, green plants combine carbon dioxide and water to make sugar and oxygen. Green plants use sugar to make starch, fats and proteins. These are tiny pores called stomata. Stomata are plant spores, which enable gas exchanges to take, place, and water to vapor to be lost. This has the benefit of moving water up the plane in a process called transpiration. The pore and the guard cells make up a single stoma. There may be as many as 6 million per typical leaf. The area just inside the internal structure of the leaf and below the stoma is the air space, which brings carbon dioxide very close to the palisade parenchyma tissue. Oxygen and carbon dioxide enter and leave through the stomata. Plants also sleep at night by closing their stomata. They cannot make food at this time. When green plants absorb solar energy, they convert it to chemical energy. This chemical energy aids in the growth and functions of the plant. When an organism eats the plant, it gets energy to carry out its processes. Without solar energy, plants could not grow, and life on earth would cease to exist. Chlorophyll, found in plants, is used to trap solar energy. This solar energy is import for the separation of H atoms from H2O. When water splits, H2 is released and built into ATP and NADPH2. O2 is given off, as well, which aids in the respiration of living organisms. The ATP and NADPH2 produced in the light phase is ready to be used for the reduction of CO2 to form glucose in the dark phase.

The chemical equation for photosynthesis in green plants: light 6CO2 + 12H2O ===== C6H12O6 + 6O2 + 6H20 Currently, fossil fuels are our main source of useable energy on earth, but they are rapidly being depleted and one day may be non-existent. It is estimated, though, that all green plants on earth, together, convert 1.44 X 10 (14) kg of C from CO2 to produce energy containing carbohydrates every year. Plants that have little or no chlorophyll, about a tenth of all the world’s species, cannot manufacture their own food and must get it in some other way. One method is that used by the sapronphytes, mostly bacteria and fungi that feed on dead or decaying organisms or on dead parts of plants living nearby. The Indian pipe, one of the few flowering saprophytes, obtains all of its organic food and minerals by means of a mutually beneficial association with fungi growing underground. These surround its roots and supply it with the nutrients from digested forest litter. These scavengers are the many parasitic plants that feed only on living organisms, deriving all or most of their food and water from green plants. Dodder, for example, with no true leaves or roots, winds sinuous threads around its host to supply itself with food. The deadly dodder, however, also has enemies of its own, at least two kinds of aphids afflict it, extending the chain of eat and be eaten from the plant to the animal kingdom.