ScienceVerseLearning path: Photosynthesis
The concepts to learn before Photosynthesis, in order. Each step links to its page and, where one exists, its quiz.
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Your path
- CellDirect prerequisite
The basic structural and functional unit of all known living organisms. Every living thing is made of one or more cells, each bounded by a membrane and containing the machinery needed to grow, respond to its environment, and reproduce. Cells fall into two broad types: prokaryotic cells (such as bacteria), which lack a nucleus, and eukaryotic cells (such as those in plants, animals and fungi), which organise their DNA inside a membrane-bound nucleus.
- EnergyDirect prerequisite
The capacity to do work, taking forms such as kinetic energy (associated with motion) and potential energy (associated with position or configuration, such as height in a gravitational field). The total energy of an isolated system is conserved: energy changes form but is never created or destroyed.
- PhotosynthesisYour goal
Photosynthesis is the process by which plants, algae and cyanobacteria capture energy from sunlight and store it in sugar molecules, using carbon dioxide and water and releasing oxygen. Overall it can be summarised as 6CO₂ + 6H₂O → C₆H₁₂O₆ + 6O₂. In chloroplasts, light-dependent reactions split water and make ATP and NADPH, and the Calvin cycle uses them to turn carbon dioxide into sugar.