Video narration
How can a plant make food without a kitchen? Look closer: each leaf is a tiny kitchen. In this kitchen, the ingredients arrive from different places. Roots absorb water from the soil, while the leaf takes in carbon dioxide from the air. Now comes the important turn: the plant does not get food from sunlight or soil. Sunlight is the energy that powers the kitchen. Green chlorophyll captures that energy. Using it, the leaf combines water and carbon dioxide to make glucose, a simple sugar-the plant's food. Glucose can be used for energy and growth, or stored as starch. And there is a useful extra: oxygen is released into the air. This whole food-making process is called photosynthesis. So how does a plant make food without a kitchen? Its leaf is the kitchen: chlorophyll uses sunlight's energy to turn water and carbon dioxide into glucose, while releasing oxygen.