How does the cell get energy?
This week, we learned about the different ways a cell and a city make energy and which does it more effectively. The cell receives energy through a process called cell respiration. One important fact about this process is that it starts with the food you eat. Another part of cell respiration is that only organic compounds can be turned into energy by your cells. So when you eat something, you chew it up, swallow, and the food item goes throughout the whole digestive system and gets turned into chyme. Then, the capillaries take the chyme (glucose) to your cells. Once the cells have the chyme, they can turn it into ATP which is energy for your body.
How does a city get energy?
Cities get energy through power plants. However, the power plants don’t just create energy. They can also create pollution which creates problems for people, animals and even crops.
Is the city or cell more efficient?
It is clear that the cell gets energy more efficiently because unlike cities that also produce something harmful while creating energy, cells produce energy quickly and they don’t produce harmful things in the process. To build on this idea, the excess food from cell respiration that gets turned into poop still has valuable resources in it. For example, recently, the government funded a project that takes poop and extracts clean water from it. That is why we think that a cell creates energy more effectively.