![[option 1] image for](../media/res/plant-land.svg)
Get organized! Help build the living world. Make something awesome. Put down some roots and be fruitful in a TREE.
Go through the process of PHOTOSYNTHESIS.
Amazingly, green plants produce their own food. They build themselves almost out of thin air. Using carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, energy from the sun and water from the soil, they create sugars. These provide the fuel for a plant's life processes and the building-blocks of a plant's biomass. Plants burn the sugar for the stored energy or use it to synthesize more complex molecules to build and grow.
While much of the carbon dioxide a plant takes in will move through the food web, 50% will return to the atmosphere through respiration as the plant lives and grows.
BEGIN AS: Carbon Dioxide. BECOME: Plant Biomass.
6 CO2 + 6 H2O + photon => C6H12O6 + 6 O2
Carbon Dioxide + Water + Light => Sugar + Oxygen
Energy from the sun is converted into chemical bond energy in sugar in the process of photosynthesis.
Learn much more with Wikipedia: Photosynthesis, Primary_production, Autotroph?
![[option 2] image for](../media/res/ocean.svg)
Why not wander over to our side? Mix in and explore the wild underwater world. Drift into the OCEAN.
Go through the process of DIFFUSION.
At the ocean surface, where the sea meets the sky, a physical exchange of gases constantly takes place. Carbon dioxide can move freely across the boundary between air and water, simply through the random motion of molecules. With the crashing of waves or in extreme ocean storms this flux is especially dynamic.
BEGIN AS: Atmospheric CO2. BECOME: Dissolved CO2.
Rate of Change in Concentration = Difference in Concentration Between Two Regions
Statistically, things tend to move from areas of higher concentration to areas of lower concentration in the process of diffusion.
Learn much more with Wikipedia: Diffusion, Diffusion_equation
You are Carbon in the Atmosphere
Free flying fun! Our random wandering has taken us to every corner of the earth. Over the years, it seems we've bounced around the whole wide world.
Carbon makes up only about 0.039% of the atmosphere. Still, that's enough for this greenhouse gas to keep the planet warm as it twirls through icy intergalactic space. Sunlight floods in through the atmosphere and is absorbed by the earth. Some of that energy is radiated back out as heat. Carbon dioxide absorbs some of that reflected heat and then re-emits it back to the earth. Seems like a game of pong! The more carbon dioxide in a planet's atmosphere, the more heat is trapped and sent back to the planet.
Gases in the atmophere are well mixed. By random collisions of molecules in air carbon dioxide ends up evenly distributed around the world no matter the source.
78% N2, 21% O2, 0.9% Ar, 0.04% CO2
The atmosphere consists of 78% Nitrogen, 21% Oxygen, 0.9% Argon, 0.04% Carbon Dioxide, and trace amounts of other gases.
Learn much more with Wikipedia: Atmosphere_of_Earth, Greenhouse_gas
