🌱 Plants take up atmospheric carbon dioxide, but 1) why do they do this and 2) how do they do it?⁠ ⁠ 1) Plants need carbon dioxide to carry out photosynthesis, which is their way of making their food from scratch. They do so by reactions involving carbon dioxide and water. This process needs to be powered by sunlight energy (chemistry of life at its finest!!). During photosynthesis, plants don’t only produce their food, but they also produce oxygen (the very oxygen that we breathe!).⁠ 2) Because carbon dioxide is a gas, plants use tiny pores that open and close to let atmospheric carbon dioxide enter the plant. These pores are called stomata and are usually very abundantly located on the underside of the leaf. As a byproduct of photosynthesis, oxygen (another gas) is generated. Oxygen will exit the plant through the same pores (stomata) that the plant uses to take up carbon dioxide. In other words, stomata are the many “mouths” that plants use to “breathe” (do gas exchange).⁠ .⁠ Unavo...