Composition of Trees

Ladia

Nov. 13, 2021

Composition of Trees

Have you ever given a thought to what the trees are composed of? What place does all the matter come from? We, humans, often take the world around us for granted without giving such things much thought. However, I consider the topics of how the world works the best to think about.

You might have heard of photosynthesis before. It is the main process going on in all plants. Basically, it converts light energy to molecular energy, which plants store in the form of carbohydrates as fuel.

Water and carbon dioxide compose some portion of our atmosphere. However, they don't combine together into more complex molecules, such as carbohydrates, by themselves. Atoms normally repel each other unless they have enough energy to overcome the repulsion and come close enough together so they can form a molecule.

Plants use the energy from sunlight to make water and carbon dioxide combine into carbohydrates. The leftover of this process is oxygen that it releases back into the atmosphere as a by-product. As a result, plants increase their mass by creating carbohydrates during the process of photosynthesis.

Essentially, trees grow from the air. They still need some minerals from the earth, but it's just a small amount, otherwise, we would see big holes below the trees.

Now think of the process of burning. That is the exact opposite of photosynthesis. It requires carbohydrates as input, as well as oxygen from the air. These are converted back into carbon dioxide and water vapor. As photosynthesis required energy from sunlight, now the stored energy is released in the form of heat.

That is how trees capture carbon dioxide from the air and help reduce the carbon footprint. But if we were to burn those trees, then we would release the carbon back into the atmosphere.

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Coffeebunny

We, humans, often take the world around us for granted without giving such things much thought.

However, I consider the topics of how the world works the best to think about.

You might have heard of photosynthesis before.

It is the main process going on in all plants.

Basically, it converts light energy to molecular energy, which plants store in the form of carbohydrates as fuel.

Water and carbon dioxide compose some portion of our atmosphere.

However, they don't combine together into more complex molecules, such as carbohydrates, by themselves.

Atoms normally repel each other unless they have enough energy to overcome the repulsion and come close enough together so they can form a molecule.

Plants use the energy from sunlight to make water and carbon dioxide combine into carbohydrates.

The leftover of this process is oxygen that it releases back into the atmosphere as a by-product.

As a result, plants increase their mass by creating carbohydrates during the process of photosynthesis.

Essentially, trees grow from the air.

They still need some minerals from the earth, but it's just a small amount, otherwise, we would see big holes below the trees.

Now think of the process of burning.

That is the exact opposite of photosynthesis.

It requires carbohydrates as input, as well as oxygen from the air.

These are converted back into carbon dioxide and water vapor.

As photosynthesis required energy from sunlight, now the stored energy is released in the form of heat.

That is how trees capture carbon dioxide from the air and help reduce the carbon footprint.

But if we were to burn those trees, then we would release the carbon back into the atmosphere.

Composition of Trees

Have you ever given a thought to what the trees are composed of?

What place does all the matter come from?

We, humans, often take the world around us for granted without giving such things much thought.