What exactly, is a plant’s food?  And where do the raw elements that make up a tree trunk come from?  Take a moment and think up two answers. I had a student ask these questions on a recent field trip.  The answer given by the speaking biologist to the second question was wrong.  In fact, I’m willing to bet your second answer was wrong too.  Plants convert sunlight into energy, which is analogous to an animal eating sugar.  Then where do the raw elements for cellulose (the stuff in a plant’s cell wall) come from?  Not the soil, as you … Continue reading This Week in the Classroom: What Do Plants Eat? And How Does It Grow Leaves? And Other Teaching Errors