| Term | Definition |
|---|
| autotrophs | organisms such as plants that make their own food |
| heterotrophs | organisms that cannot use the sun's energy directly |
| photosynthesis | a process in which plants use the energy of sunlight to convert water and carbon dioxide into high-energy carbohydrates and oxygen, a waste product |
| pigments | light absorbing molecules that plants use to gather the sun's energy |
| chlorophyll | the plants' principal pigment |
| photosystems | light collecting units of the chloroplast |
| thylakoids | saclike photosynthetic membranes |
| stroma | region outside the thylakoid membranes in chloroplasts |
| light-dependent reactions | reactions of photosynthesis that use energy from light to produce ATP and NADPH |
| ATP synthase | large protein that uses energy from H+ ions to bind ADP and a phosphate group together to produce ATP |
| Melvin Calvin | American scientist who worked out the details of the Calvin cycle |
| Jan van Helmont | The Belgian physician who devised an experiment to find out if plants grew by taking material out of the soil. He concluded that trees gain most of their mass from water. |
| Joseph Priestley | The English minister who performed an experiment that would give another insight into the process of photosynthesis. He found that the plant releases oxygen |
| Jan Ingenhousz | He found that aquatic plants produce oxygen bubbles in the light but not in the dark. He concludes that plants need sunlight to produce oxygen |
| Julius Robert Mayer | He proposed that plants convert light energy into chemical energy. |
| adenosine triphosphate (ATP) | one of the principal chemical compounds that living things use to store and release energy |
| NADP+ | one of the carrier molecules that transfers high-energy electrons from chlorophyll to other molecules |
| Calvin Cycle | reactions of photosynthesis in which energy from ATP and NADP is used t build high-energy compounds such as sugars |
| calorie | amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 degree Celsius |
| glycolysis | first step in releasing the energy of glucose, in which a molecule of glucose is broken into two molecules of pyruvic acid |
| cellular respiration | process that releases energy by breaking down glucose and other food molecules in the presence of oxygen |
| NAD+ | electron carrier involved in glycolysis |
| fermentation | process by which cells release energy in the absence of oxygen |
| anaerobic | process that does not require oxygen |
| aerobic | process that requires energy |
| Krebs cycle | second stage of cellular respiration, in which pyruvic acids is broken down into carbon dioxide in a series of energy-extracting reactions |
| electron transport chain | a series of proteins in which the high-energy electrons from the Krebs cycle are used to convert ADP into ATP |
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