Summary
Presto-chango photosynthesis! This process takes in carbon dioxide and water and makes glucose and oxygen. And it's all possible because chlorophyll allows plants to absorb sunlight. It's nature's way of conserving its resources. The starting compounds and energy absorbed by photosynthesis change to something new, but they never disappear.

Think Like a Scientist
Now that you have learned about the laws of conservation of mass and energy and the process of photosynthesis, you should be able to answer the following focus questions:

How do living systems follow the laws of conservation of mass and energy?
How does photosynthesis show the conservation of mass and energy?
How are food and oxygen produced during the process of photosynthesis?
Talk Like a Scientist
There are new vocabulary terms in this lesson:

Carbon dioxide: a compound that is a colorless, odorless gas
Chlorophyll: a green pigment present in all plants that absorbs light to provide energy for photosynthesis
Chloroplast: an organelle that contains chlorophyll and in which photosynthesis takes place
Energy: a capacity to do work that can produce physical changes within living and nonliving systems
Glucose: a type of sugar that is produced during photosynthesis to store chemical energy
Law of conservation of energy: states that energy can be neither created nor destroyed, but it can transform from one form to another
Photosynthesis: a process that uses sunlight to synthesize foods from carbon dioxide and water