Food made from light
Photosynthesis is the amazing process plants use to make their own food, and this word search gathers it. You'll track down the ingredients — SUNLIGHT, WATER and carbon DIOXIDE — and the green PIGMENT in the LEAF that captures the light to make GLUCOSE and OXYGEN.
Each puzzle pulls a fresh selection from the list, so the leaf changes every time you play — gentle on Easy, and a Hard-mode challenge once the diagonals and backwards words appear.
Inside the plant
A plant is a clever food factory, and the words are here. WATER is drawn up by the ROOTS, through the STEM and the XYLEM and PHLOEM VEINS, to the LEAF where the CELLS ABSORB sunlight to PRODUCE SUGAR. Tiny holes called STOMATA let gases in and out, the plant stores energy as STARCH, and the whole PROCESS keeps the PLANT GREEN and growing.
Why photosynthesis matters to everyone
Plants are the only living things that can make their own food from scratch, and they do it with sunlight. Inside the LEAF, a green PIGMENT called chlorophyll (which is what makes plants green) traps the energy in SUNLIGHT and uses it to turn WATER and carbon DIOXIDE into GLUCOSE — a sugar the plant uses to grow. The leftover OXYGEN is released into the air through tiny pores called STOMATA.
That 'waste' OXYGEN happens to be the gas every animal — including you — needs to breathe, so in a real sense plants keep the whole planet alive. They also sit at the bottom of nearly every food chain: when an animal eats a plant, it's really borrowing the Sun's energy that the plant captured. Photosynthesis even helps clean the air, since plants take in the carbon DIOXIDE we breathe out.
Great for a plants topic
It pairs perfectly with a science lesson on plants and how they grow — Easy mode keeps the grid small with no diagonals or reverse words. Play online, print a PDF pack, or use our Make Your Own tool to build a grid from your own biology words.