Saturday, November 13, 2010

Mindblowing fact of the day

I remember learning about photosynthesis in my high school biology classes, but I didn't really understand how cool it was until I took biology in college. When you think about it, it really is quite amazing.

Here's the equation for photosynthesis:


Pretty simple, right? But it's so cool! Just think about it! The carbon in the carbon dioxide turns into sugar! It's taking the air around it and making it into plant stuff. And it only uses water and light to do it. It's absolutely amazing!



Did you know that the reverse is true in us? The sugars that we eat get broken down and turn into carbon dioxide, and that's the CO2 that we breathe out. They did an experiment in mice to prove this. They made some radioactive sugar and the mice ate it, and then 45 minutes later they analyzed the mice's breath and found that it was radioactive. Talk about needing a Tic Tac.   Ba dum dum!

1 comment:

Kathy Haynie said...

It occurred to me recently that a forest is like a massive solar energy project. Instead of turning sunlight into electricity, plants turn sunlight into sugar. Yay for the plants! They are SO awesome.