Video Transcript
Not including energy or ATP, state
the correct word equation for aerobic respiration.
This question is asking us to
recall the word equation for aerobic respiration. Since our final product will be a
word equation, while knowing the chemical symbols will come in handy, we’re not
going to include them in our final answer. Another thing we’ve been told not
to include is energy or ATP in this word equation. So while we know that they’re the
purpose of aerobic respiration, we’re gonna go ahead and leave them out of our
answer. Our final word equation should have
the reactants for aerobic respiration on the left side of an arrow and the products
on the right.
In order to answer this question,
let’s review what we know about aerobic respiration. Here, we see our busy biology
student. They are breathing, they’re eating
an apple as a healthy snack, and their heart is beating, pumping blood all
throughout their body. And all of these things are
essential to the process of aerobic respiration. Cellular respiration is the process
of breaking down nutrients for energy. And every living organism carries
out some form of cellular respiration. And the word aerobic means that
this is specifically a type of cellular respiration that uses oxygen. So we know that our reactants have
to include some type of nutrients as well as oxygen.
Let’s take a closer look at our
student and his cells. Our student receives their
nutrients from the food they eat. They’re broken down in the small
intestine and absorbed into the bloodstream, where they’re transported to our cells
primarily in the form of glucose. Our student also breathes in oxygen
from the air, which enters the lungs and is absorbed into the bloodstream, which
distributes it to the cells of our bodies. Recall that each cell contains
mitochondria, which are bean-shaped organelles that are the site of cellular
respiration. They possess a folded inner
membrane and several different types of enzymes that facilitate the complex
metabolic reactions that allow them to convert oxygen and glucose into carbon
dioxide and water and releasing energy that’s used to form ATP, which is a molecule
that powers almost all of our cells’ essential functions.
The water is largely recycled, but
the carbon dioxide diffuses out of the cells and back into the bloodstream, which
carries it back to the lungs, where it’s removed from our bodies when we exhale. So breathing takes in oxygen and
removes carbon dioxide, eating provides nutrients, especially glucose, and your
circulatory system, driven by your heart, carries all of these materials from place
to place, which allows our cells to make the ATP that provides the cellular energy
that they use to do their jobs. So in response to our question,
aerobic respiration is the process of converting oxygen and glucose into carbon
dioxide and water, which releases energy to power our cells.
