Plant makes starch from carbon dioxide by photosynthesis. We have been taught this mechanism repeatedly in science classes since elementary school. This photosynthesis, making starch from carbon dioxide, can be thought as a sublime work that only plants can do.
When energy of light is added to 6 carbon dioxides and 12 waters, one glucose sugar is generated. Chlorophyll in leaves absorbs violet and red color of light, and turns their pigments into electrons. Transformation of photon into electron… This amazing work of plant is actually a work in quantum mechanics. The opposite work, transformation of electron into photon, is usually done by electric machines like fluorescent lights. Eeither humans, animals, or plants don’t usually do this work. It is surprising to think the plants we see every day are turning photons into electrons every day.
At the same time, it is also surprising that they turn an inorganic substance, carbon dioxide, into a organic substance, glucose sugar. First, sugar is made from carbon dioxide, which is made of three carbons connected together. The sugar connects to another sugar to turn into glucose sugar, and then, the glucose sugar connects to another glucose sugar again and become starch. Textbooks tell that plants photosynthesize and store starch during daytime, and break down the starch to use for breathing at night.
Alcohol fuel and bio fuels are becoming hot topics right now, but these fuels are alcohol made from starch, which plants produce from carbon dioxide. Starch converts to alcohol when fermented.
There is one thing about plants I’ve always been impressed by. For example, if you put a leaf of pothos in a glass of water, after a while, tens of leaves grow out of the one leaf. This phenomenon happens even if you don’t add any other nutrition in the water.
Suppose ten leaves grows out of one leaf of pothos, the amount of nutrition, amino acids, starch, minerals, vitamins, and fibers, in the ten leaves is ten times as much as what the original leaf had in total. Where did they come from? The water did not contain any of the minerals such as magnesium, potassium, iron, copper, manganese, zinc, fluorine, sulfur, and phosphorus. Where did they come from? There are only three substances, carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen that can be taken from the air. I can’t come up with any other idea than that the leaf produced new elements from the three substances in the air, by incredible “atomic conversion.”
Humans cannot do this work, atomic conversion, unless we have some kind of large facilities like a nuclear reactor. But even if we have the large-scaled nuclear facilities, it is questionable if we can do atomic conversion with the chemistry level of now. Almost all scientists must say it is impossible.?
The same thing can be said about primitive algae like chlorella, which has been focused as the technology of 21st century lately. As chlorella has very much protein and vitamin B family, folate, iron and carotene, it can grow with unusual speed, and produce its vital nutrition from carbon dioxide or azoto as long as it gets sunlight. This alga is performing atomic conversion with unusually high speed inside its body to breed with high speed. Although a little food is put in a chlorella tank of course, algae are still incredible existences that can produce elements that didn’t exist by atomic conversion.
I think we can have an idea that an atom will not be what it is forever; it can be converted into another type of atom. It is time to change a common sense of chemistry. And, you can make a lot more alcohol with much faster speed from alga starch, than making from cornstarch.
