• Carbon dioxide and water are reactants

• Glucose and oxygen are the products

• Glucose is shown as the food compound produced

• The glucose is quickly converted to sucrose for transportation around the
plant, then it is stored as starch or converted into other molecules

Importance of photosynthesis

• Energy production for organisms

- Photosynthesis provides energy in the form of chemical energy in nutrients
for most organisms

- Plants utilize sunlight to synthesize glucose and other carbohydrates

containing energy originally from sunlight

- In food chains, animals obtain energy from the plants they consume, making
plants the primary source of energy in the world's food web

• Energy transfer in food chains

- Food chains illustrate how energy is transferred from one organism to

another.

- Plants capture sunlight energy, which is then passes on to herbivores and

then to carnivores, showing/demonstrating the flow of energy in ecosystems

• Oxygen production
- Photosynthesis is crucial for providing oxygen to Earth's atmosphere.

- Both animals and plants require oxygen for respiration.

- Oxygen, a byproduct of photosynthesis, is released from plant leaves and

mixes with atmospheric gases.

- Approximately % of earth's atmospheric composition is oxygen.

Biology Page 1
◊ Earth has almost no oxygen when it was formed billion years ago
◊ Scientists think that oxygen began to collect in the air when bacteria first
began to photosynthesize
◊ There were no plants back then until million years ago.

Biology Page 2