Can you still remember the formula which, when written out in dusty chalk, took up the length of the board ?
Revisiting it, there seem more elements to grasp. Here’s my attempt at conveying the basics in a fashion more suited to Jackie magazine ( my favourite reading at the time) than textbook ( not).
The Photosynthesis Party
Venue: Chloroplast. To find a chloroplast, go to a palisade mesophyll cell. You’ll find them near the surface of a plant leaf.
Once in the cell there will be 50 to 100 chloroplasts to choose from – don’t worry - they all hold the same party so you can’t pick the wrong one.
Main Man: Chlorophyll. To stay the course he’ll have been keeping up his mineral intake. Too little iron or magnesium and he’ll miss out on the photosynthesizing action. He’s not forgotten the time when looking yellow around the gills, he was diagnosed chlorotic and the whole thing went ahead without him.
Star Guest: Sunlight. Brings the party to life, all that energy. But Chlorophyll’s got his favourite parts of this guest’s spectrum suit of many colours, greens and yellows he reflects right back out again whilst holding blues and reds hostage.
Time: Starts in daylight hours, scheduled to continue all night long.
Action: With the arrival of light, chlorophyll gets excited and rejecting all others, corrals his beloved red and blue into the VIP area. Meanwhile water, a photosynthesis regular, is trying his luck and has turned up as a double act – hydrogen and oxygen. But at this bash, which is different from the respiration party, only hydrogen has an access all areas pass. A scuffle breaks out and with all the energy from the arrival of red and blue light still buzzing around hydrogen gets separated from oxygen. So whilst hydrogen stays, oxygen exits the leaf and slips quietly away into the atmosphere.
Later another guest, Carbon dioxide, who’d arrived earlier in the day when it was still light, decides its now or never. He’d seen hydrogen arrive as part of water but didn’t want to make his move with oxygen still around. Now, under the cover of darkness he seizes his moment thinking, united with hydrogen, life will be sweet.
He gets his friend, enzyme ribulose bisphosphate carboxylase, to make the introductions, who despite his long name makes short work of bringing them together.
‘Who’d have thought it‘…. he said….. ‘carbon dioxide and hydrogen‘… but everyone misheard him and thought he said ‘carbohydrate’ and so that’s how they came to be known….
Not perhaps a technically accurate rendition of photosynthesis but I thought I’d give myself a little more poetic license than
- 6 C20 molecules + 6 H20 molecules plus light give rise to 1 C6H12O6 molecule + 6 O2 molecules ( when in the presence of chlorophyll)
allows for !!
