Video narration
How can a plant make food if it never eats lunch? Think of each green leaf as a tiny kitchen. It brings in ingredients from two places: water travels up from the roots, and carbon dioxide, a gas in the air, enters the leaf. Then sunlight supplies the energy, like heat under a cooking pot. But here is the important turn: the leaf is not simply using sunlight. It uses sunlight to power a chemical change. Water and carbon dioxide are transformed into glucose-the simple sugar we call the plant's food-and oxygen. The glucose helps the plant grow and build itself, while oxygen is released into the air. So photosynthesis is the leaf's kitchen process: sunlight provides energy, ingredients go in, and useful products come out. How does the plant make food without eating? It cooks its own glucose from water and carbon dioxide, and releases oxygen.