FN 225: Nutrition
Rathakette, Ph.D.
Health Professions Division
Lane Community College
Eugene, Oregon
LECTURE 3B:  Wilbur and Solar Power

The Lectures NEXT week (Week 4) are longer than usual, so please plan your time for next week accordingly.

FORUM:
  1. Looking at the above results from the Diet Analysis project, many students reported being low in fruits and vegetables.  What kind of strategies do you use or could you use to eat more fruits and vegetables?  Note:  students also reported being low in dairy, but from my experience you don't need 3 c. of dairy to get the nutrients like calcium that you need.  Usually 2 c. is plenty as long as you are meeting the recommendations from the other food groups.
  2. Part 2 of Wilbur says that the plant hooks glucose together to make starch in seeds.  What kind of foods can you think of that are seeds that contain starch?

For this lecture, have in front of you the "Wilbur Drawing" and "Your Notes about the Wilbur Drawing"  and "Wilbur and Solar Power" in the lecture outline for Chapter 4-1 (which you can print off of moodle).


The "Wilbur Drawing" in your lecture outline is subtitled "How Energy Goes from the Sun to Human Cells".  I will be using corn as a specific example of this, but it's what happens in all plants.

It's sort of hard to read the bottom of the "Wilbur Drawing.  It says in cells everywhere in body.


I used two books in particular to help me learn more about this process.  Both can be found at the LCC Library.  Here's one of them.

04newoxfordcover02newoxfordcorn03newoxfordrice

I chose corn because it's a crop native to the Americas.  The illustration on the right shows rice, which would be better used to illustrate this process if we were in Asia.

The other book I used was Isaac Asimov's book Photosynthesis.  He was a Russian-born biochemist and writer who died an American in 1992.

06asimovphotosyncover



Isaac Asimov is the author of 300 books, many of them science fiction.
08asimovcavesofsteel1953


5 steps of the Wilbur Drawing
  1. Photosynthesis

    Where is the Wilbur Drawing showing photosynthesis taking place?

  2. Making starch in the plant.  The plant can bond more than 1000 molecules of glucose together to make starch.

    Where in the Wilbur Drawing does it show starch being made in the plant?

  3. Digestion.  The starch in the popcorn is digested down to individual glucose molecules.  Where is the Wilbur Drawing showing starch enzymes being present?  You should see TWO places.

  4. Absorption & Transport. The individual glucose molecules are absorbed from the small intestine into the bloodstream which transports them to cells everywhere.

  5. Cellular Respiration- Inside cells everywhere, the glucose is broken apart, releasing its energy.  Only then does Wilbur get any energy out of the popcorn.

The two videos below will explain these 5 steps in more depth.  




Have the "Chapter 4-1 Lecture Outline" in front of you as you're watching this video clip.  The video has both audio and text that will help you fill in your lecture outline.

To watch them, you need the latest version of QuickTime on your computer.  Click here to download the newest version of Quick Time.

Video Clip 1 of Wilbur Lecture
about 14 minutes



The little snippet of music in the previous Video Clip is Garrison Keillor singing "Sweet, Sweet Corn".
 

Have the "Chapter 4-1 Lecture Outline" in front of you as you're watching this video clip.  The video has both audio and text that will help you fill in your lecture outline.

Video Clip 2 of Wilbur Lecture
about 17 minutes
The above Video Clip leaves out something that helps Step 5 happen.  And those "helpers" are enzymes.

When ANYTHING burns, Step 5 (cellular respiration) happens and
  1. CO2 (the gas carbon dioxide)
  2. H2O vapor and
  3. heat
are produced and released into the atmosphere.  

It could be glucose in our cells being burned,
or it could be the fuel we burn to heat and cool our houses,
or the fuel we burn to power our cars
or the rain forest trees that are burned to clear land.

This released CO2 is the primary “greenhouse gas”.  It can raise the earth's temperature, leading to "global warming", because the CO2 can trap heat near the earth and keep it from rising up.  

Acidic seawater could disrupt food chains. By Dan Catchpole, The Associated Press, in The Register-Guard, May 28, 2008.
The acidic seawater is moving closer to shallow waters containing the bulk of marine life, according to an article this month in the journal Science. The increasingly corrosive water threatens the survival of many organisms, from microscopic plants and animals at the base of the food chain to shellfish, corals and the young of some marine species.

“We actually saw the shells dissolving off these living organisms. They were dissolving off the terapods as they were swimming around,” Sabine said. Such creatures comprise as much as 40 percent of the Pacific king salmon’s diet.

“As long as CO2 continues to increase in the atmosphere, the oceans will continue to absorb that,” Sabine said. “What we’re seeing is only going to get worse.”


The following is a site with a simple explanation of global warming that the kids you know might be interested in (from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources' program called Environmental Education for Kids): Global Warming is Hot Stuff! 
END OF LECTURE 3B