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🌿 How do plants make food from sunlight?

Chloroplasts capture photons, split water, and fix carbon dioxide into sugars that feed ecosystems.

lessons

~10 min

to learn

🔬 Science

subject

Adults

level

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What you’ll learn

Sunlight into sugarExplain photosynthesis as light-driven sugar building with oxygen as byproduct.Chlorophyll catches light; water is split; CO₂ becomes carbohydrate. Carbon in plants is mostly from air, not soil bulk.
Stomata and the water billLink stomata, xylem, and alternative CO₂ strategies to the water cost of photosynthesis.Open pores admit CO₂ and lose water. Xylem keeps leaves supplied. CAM and C4 are evolutionary answers to heat and drought stress.
Oxygen, ecosystems, and limitsPlace photosynthesis in ecosystems and note co-limitation and respiration.Oxygen-rich air is a long-term photosynthetic legacy. Resources co-limit rates. Plants also respire; net fluxes are balances.

Questions this course answers

Where does most of the carbon in a tree’s trunk originally come from?

Photosynthesis fixes atmospheric CO₂ into organic molecules; soil supplies water and nutrients but not most of the carbon mass of wood.

Order the connection from root water to sugar-making

Water supply and gas exchange set up the chloroplast factory.

Match each idea to its meaning

Oxygen is a byproduct; Calvin builds sugar; stomatal closure trades gas exchange for water savings; respiration consumes sugar.

Grounded in trusted sources

Campbell Biology / standard botany chapters on photosynthesis
NASA Earth science education on chlorophyll and primary production
USDA / university extension plant physiology fact sheets
Nobel-era and textbook histories of Calvin cycle discovery (conceptual)

Every Wunder lesson is built from real, reputable sources — never invented.

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