Saturday, January 08, 2011

I'm Scientifically Illiterate

This Extension post says college students lack scientific literacy. When I dig into it, I discover I don't answer a key question on the carbon cycle correctly: From whence do plants obtain their mass? 

The answer seems to be from the carbon dioxide in the air.  (Although I'd suspect many plants obtain much of their mass from the water in the ground, being constituted mostly of water, but the question, and my initial answer, ignores the issue of water.)

No comments: