Energy and Life - Unit 3 Lesson 6

In Unit 2, we learned about how plants create their own food and animals get their food by, well, eating other things. Remember that energy flows through an ecosystem. Energy comes from the sun, plants take that light energy to produce sugars, then herbivores eat the plants, and then carnivores eat the herbivores. The energy that an eagle uses for flapping its wings ultimately came from the sun.

In Unit 2, we were looking at the “big” picture. In the upcoming lessons, we will zoom in to the details of two chemical processes that relate to living things and energy.

1. Photosynthesis - We will see how plants use sunlight to create sugar molecules (glucose).
2. Cellular Respiration - We will also see how all living things use the energy that is stored in molecules (such as glucose) in order to grow, move, and do all the other processes that living things do.

This video from Khan Academy gives us a preview of photosynthesis and cellular respiration.