Yes, it’s been a while. This week, I was able to have enough of a conversation with the elder Free-Ride offspring to discover a homework assignment that looked … a lot like a conversation about science.
In this case, it’s a conversation between the elder Free-Ride offspring (“Me”) and a chloroplast (“Chloroplast”). Big ups to my child’s science teacher for giving assignments that can generate content for this blog (and for letting kids type their homework so I can copy the file rather than having to transcribe).
Me: So, what exactly are you?
Chloroplast: I am an organelle found in the cytoplasm of plant cells and a few kinds of bacteria.
Me: How many of you are there per cell?
Chloroplast: It depends on the organism. There are about thirty to forty of me per leaf cell, but in a certain type of single-celled alga, there is only one of me.
Me: What do you do for the organisms you are a part of?
Chloroplast: I capture the energy of the sun and use that energy, along with some carbon dioxide and water, to make glucose for the cell.
Me: Wow, that’s amazing! Is that the process that plants use to make their own food?
Chloroplast: Yes, it is. That process is called photosynthesis.
Me: Is it anything like making a sandwich?
Chloroplast: What!? No! Of course not!!!
Me: Did I offend you? Or do you just not care for a nice, delicious BLT?
Chloroplast: Of COURSE you offended me! We chloroplasts don’t use other organisms to make food! And especially not organisms that contain other chloroplasts!
Me: Okay, I’m sorry. How do you cook up some glucose in place of a sandwich?
Chloroplast: It’s more like engineering than cooking, you know. First, I store energy from the sun and obtain six molecules each of carbon dioxide and water.
Me: How do you get the water?
Chloroplast: It’s carried up to the leaves, where I live with my fellow chloroplasts, by the roots. Now, as I was saying, once I get those compounds, I use the light energy to remove their bonds. Then, I rearrange the elements and make them into a glucose molecules and six O² molecules. The glucose is used by the cell for its daily functions, and the oxygen is expelled from the plant by the leaf’s stomata.
Me: Whoa! I didn’t know that plants did chemistry!
Chloroplast: Believe it. Bask in our autotrophic glory, you inferior heterotroph.
Me: By the way, you do know that cooking is just a form of chemistry-
Chloroplast: Shut up.
Me: Okay, another question. Are all organelles as rude as the chloroplasts, or is it a unique feature?
Chloroplast: It’s not at all unique. You should hear the nucleus sometime.
Me: Now then, I’ve been wondering about this. How do you absorb the light energy?
Chloroplast: I have a green pigment inside me called chlorophyll. It absorbs red and blue light. Chlorophyll is what turns plants a lovely shade of green, and not your ugly human skin tone.
Me: I have something else to do now. Thank you for your time.
Chloroplast: Wait! I’m not done gloating about my other superior features!
Me: Too bad. Good bye, you jerkwad of an organelle.
Minor point, organelles don’t exist in bacteria. In fact, chloroplasts ARE bacteria. Or at least were ~1-1.5 bya.
Let’s see if the science teacher knocks anything off the grade for that.
(And, on a Friday Sprog Blog, all the points are minor points. *RIMSHOT*)
Your kids are such a wonderful combination of clever and funny. Hooray for Sprog Blogging!
“Bask in our autotrophic glory, you inferior heterotroph.”
YES! THIS! THIS is why I need to graft some euglena into my skin. But yeah. Many microbes have chloroplasts. Just not bacteria.
Sprog the elder cracks me up.
fantastic! i love “autotrophic glory” and “jerkwad of an organelle”. I hope Elder Sprog gets an A+, notwithstanding PLS’s minor point.
“Bask in our autotrophic glory, you inferior heterotroph.”
If I hadn’t swallowed the morning caffeine medium right before reading this line, it (the medium) would have ended up as a fine mist across my laptop keyboard.
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