Video narration
How does a plant get food if it can't walk to a kitchen? Think of a plant you've watered in a school garden. It needs sunlight and water, so it can seem as if the soil is feeding it. But soil isn't the plant's food. Sunlight brings energy to the leaves. Roots absorb water from the soil, and leaves take in carbon dioxide, an invisible gas in the air. Inside the leaves, green chlorophyll helps capture that light energy. Then comes photosynthesis: the leaves use the energy, water, and carbon dioxide to make glucose, a kind of sugar the plant uses as food. Sunlight powers the change; it isn't an ingredient in the sugar. The leaves also release oxygen into the air. So how does it get food? It makes its own sugar in its leaves-and releases oxygen.