Peggy the pig and Callie the Cow were going on a field trip with their farm class to learn about cellular respiration and photosynthesis!

Their class was not particularly excited but Callie and Peggy were ready to go and brought their bags full of snacks and their notebooks ready for the educational trip!

When Callie and Peggy arrived with their class at their destination, Callie began to shout many questions at farmer Fred, ¨How does this work?¨, ¨Why does this work?¨, ¨What´s ATP?¨, ¨How does the grass we eat supply us with the essentials to life?¨. Farmer Fred told Callie, ¨Calm down now! We will get to all the details in just a second! First we will start with this fine grass and how it gets it´s food.¨

¨You see here my fellow friends, the food we eat uses a process called photosynthesis to capture energy from the sun to make sugars!¨ ¨Sugars?¨ Peggy replied in confusion. ¨Yes Peggy, sugars, let me further explain as we walk.¨ They began to walk down the path and Peggy shouted as they explored the atmosphere. ¨FARMER FRED!! These... these are light reactions we talked about last week, what do they do??¨ Farm Fred explained that the light reactions captured energy from sunlight and so water is processed and broken down while oxygen (or air) is released. ¨But.. what about the ´dark reactions´?¨ ¨Well, the dark reactions are reactions that use energy from the light reactions to make these sugars we were talking about.¨ ¨Oooooohhhhhh!¨ exclaimed Peggy

Photosynthesis has an equation of:

6CO2 + 6H2O + light energy = C6H12O6 + 6O2.

¨All living organisms on earth consist of one or more cells. Each cell runs on the chemical energy found mainly in carbohydrate molecules (food), and the majority of these molecules are produced by one process: photosynthesis. Through photosynthesis, certain organisms convert solar energy (sunlight) into chemical energy, which is then used to build carbohydrate molecules.¨ ¨WOW that´s neat!¨ said the class in unity, ¨The energy used to hold these molecules together is released when an organism breaks down food. Cells then use this energy to perform work, such as cellular respiration. The energy that is harnessed from photosynthesis enters the ecosystems of our planet continuously and is transferred from one organism to another. Therefore, directly or indirectly, the process of photosynthesis provides most of the energy required by living things on earth. Photosynthesis also results in the release of oxygen into the atmosphere. In short, to eat and breathe, we depend almost entirely on the organisms that carry out photosynthesis.¨Said Farmer Fred. ¨Now I know that was a lot of information but we have one more subject to cover.

"Photosynthesis takes place inside ONLY plant cells. Specifically the chloroplast of the cell. The chloroplast contain a green substance called chlorophyll," Said Farmer Fred. "Now, the table of how photosynthesis works, because anything matter used as an input must come out..." "Because matter can never be destroyed only changed!" Yelled Peggy. Now the role of ATP synthase: The ATP Synthase spans the membrane and allows hydrogen ions to pass through it. It is powered by the gradient, H+ ions pass through the ATP synthase and force it to rotate, almost like a turbine being spun like water in a hydroelectric power plant. As it rotates, ATP synthase binds ADP and a phosphate group together to produce ATP. This process which is known as chemiosmosis, enables light dependent electron transport to produce not only NADPH (at the end of the electron transport chain), but ATP as well. "Onto the Calvin Cycle, The Calvin cycle is "The reactions of the Calvin cycle add carbon (from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere) to a simple five-carbon molecule called RuBP. These reactions use chemical energy from NADPH and ATP that were produced in the light reactions. The final product of the Calvin cycle is glucose."

¨Now I am going to teach you about Cellular Respiration!¨ ¨What´s that??¨ asked many students. ¨It´s the process that releases chemical energy from sugars and other molecules to make a compound known as ATP.¨. ¨Well how does that work,¨ asked Peggy. ¨Well Peggy, their are three stages we have to go through, starting with Glycolysis. This is the process where glucose (the sugar produced by plants) is split into 3-carbon molecules, this doesn´t require oxygen either! Also glycolysis makes 2 molecules of ATP as we can see in this chart!¨ ¨That´s amazing that the products of glycolysis are broken down to make MORE ATP!¨said Gerald the Goat.