Power Of Plants

because you wouldn't be alive that's something to  think about the next time you take it did you know these make food even a weed is a food factory  most wonderful factory that man has ever built isn't half as wonderful as this small factory  a weed may not make food that you like to eat but it makes food just the same if we look at  a drawing we can see hunters of equipment for making food are the roots the stems and the leaves  each does its part out of all the materials in the world a plant makes its food from just three  things it uses something in the air it uses water and it uses minerals in the soil you'd  starve if you had to eat these things but a plant can make all its food to live and grow from  only air water and minerals perhaps you've done the experiment in class where you plant seeds in  it and keep them wet with black apron if you will put the jar aside for three or  four days to let the plants grow if you can speed up the plant's  growth it would look like this as the route goes down hundreds of blue  tears grow up from it these root hairs reach out and get water and minerals from the soil of course you won't actually be able to see  the root growth but if you look closely with a magnifying glass you can see how many and how  tiny the root hairs are if we look at a drawing again you can see how the roots do their  job here is a very large picture of just one root hair the walls of the root hair are  very thin and I made so water and minerals can pass through water soaks into the ground and  dissolves the minerals the water and minerals are first absorbed by the root hair then  passing two tubes at the center of the root here they begin their journey up out of the ground  they flow up through the larger routes through tubes in the stems and finally into the leaves  you can find the tubes in a stalk of celery easily can you see them here there is an experiment that you may want to  do the show that the tubes Kalra standing some feet up the way the ink goes  into the tubes this would get red like this it takes two or three hours  for this much ink to get up into the stalk the ink goes on up in the leaves  in a leaf the tubes are called veins the veins in leaves make wonderful  designs hold some leaves up to the light and you can see the veins  branch out and become smaller and smaller until the water and minerals  are carried to every bit of the leaf now the water and minerals are in the leaves but  you remember that in order to make food the plant also needs something from the air this something  is a gas called carbon dioxide if you had a microscope then could look at a piece of a leaf  much much smaller than the head of a pin you would see something like this each leaf has thousands  of tiny openings which let him the carbon dioxide now the leaf has all of the materials it needs  it has carbon dioxide from the air and water and minerals from the ground what happens now  how are these materials made into food no one knows exactly how it happens but we do know  about one of the things that a leaf uses in making food it's the part of the leaf that  makes it cream the part called chlorophyll chlorophyll is the machinery that makes the food  there is still one more thing that a plant needs sunlight sunlight is the power that runs this  wonderful machinery every day all over the earth chlorophyll and sunlight work together they work  to turn water and carbon dioxide into food and what about minerals plants use minerals in many  other ways but some of the minerals go into the food making to do their work in the dark at night  no only when there is light again leaves make food of course many plants don't store food but think of all the foods that you and I love