Plants are solar-powered sugar factories! They use sunlight to make food, then burn that sugar for energy to live and grow.
🔁Two Opposite Recipes
🌞Photosynthesis — making food
Inside leaves, chlorophyll captures sunlight to combine carbon dioxide + water into glucose (food) — and oxygen is given off.
⚡Cellular Respiration — burning food (about the reverse!)
Cells break down glucose using oxygen to release the energy the plant needs to live and grow — giving back CO₂ and water.
🔂 A never-ending swap
🌞Photosynthesis makes the sugar and oxygen.
⚡Respiration uses that sugar and oxygen for energy.
🌱The leftovers from one are the ingredients for the other!
🍃Inside the Leaf
A leaf's gas exchange & water
The 4 jobs going on
Chlorophyll — the green pigment that catches sunlight to power photosynthesis.
Stomata — tiny holes that let CO₂ in and oxygen out.
Glucose — the sugar food the plant makes and stores.
Transpiration — water evaporates out of the leaves, pulling more up from the roots like a giant straw.
🔑Key Terms
🌞PhotosynthesisMaking food (sugar) using sunlight, water, and CO₂.
⚡Cellular RespirationBreaking down sugar to release energy inside cells.
💚ChlorophyllGreen pigment that captures the sunlight.
🍬GlucoseThe sugar that plants make for food.
🌬️StomataTiny holes in leaves for gas exchange.
💧TranspirationWater evaporating out of the leaves.
⭐Remember: photosynthesis turns sunlight, water, and CO₂ into sugar + oxygen — then respiration burns that sugar to power the plant. The two recipes run in opposite directions!