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0:02
Here's your webbing meal, Sir. Oh, boy, thanks. And don't forget your decomposer's cup of worms. Oh, boy.
0:11
Plants and animals. Decomposers too. Food in the web is connected to you. That's what a food web's all about. Yeah, food webs. You know, that's what today's show is all about. Today's show.
0:25
Build by the Science Guard. Build by the Science Guard. Build by the Science Guard.
0:32
Build by the Science
0:40
Guard. Inertia is a property of matter. Build by the Science Guard. T -, 7 seconds.
0:53
I'm the Science Guy. Brought to you by plants. Plants are food.
1:08
Did you know that all living things depend on plants?That's right. If there were no plants, there would be no us. See, either you eat plants.
1:22
Or you are a plant.
1:25
Or you eat things that eat plants.
1:29
Everything that eats everything that's alive is connected. And we call these connections the food web. You're part of it, too, pal. Who, me?Me MeYou know, there's probably something eating at you right now.
1:45
See, no matter what food we're talking about, we can always tie it back to plants. Now suppose, for example, how we're going to enjoy this chicken sandwich. Well, here on the outside, we have a piece of bread. So let me tie the chicken sandwich to the food web by attaching it to wheat. And wheat, by the way, is a plant.
2:07
DuhNow, sandwich also has some lettuce. And lettuce is over here. Now to the meat of the matter, the chicken.
2:20
Now, you know, chickens eat corn. That's right. And corn is a plant.
2:26
Now, also on my sandwich, some tomatoes. Everything is connected. The weed is pollinated. It departs by some butterflies. No matter what the weed we're talking about, it's all tied to plants. You know, I'm kind of tangled up in here. I'm part of the food web.
3:29
Where does food come from?The shopping center. Where does the shopping center get it?I don't know. Does it come from farms?Yeah, I guess so. You ever been on a farm?No. You ever seen a cow?Sure, on television.
4:02
Hey, Alfonso, what are you doing?Just checking on what's growing. You know, the crops, the flowers, usual. Huh It's beautiful, man. Not those, Bill. These. Look.
4:16
Oh, the decomposers. Yeah bacteria fungi earthworms all the things that eat dead stuff and like it. Wow, just look at all those decomposers putting important nutrients back into the soil for plants to use. It is important, right, Bill?Because we all depend upon plants.
4:46
This is a good hamburger. It's meat that came from a cow. Now, what do you think that cow ate?
4:55
The cow ate grass. And grass is, duh, a plant.
5:01
You don't want that?
5:18
Richie, eat your vegetables.
5:22
Dad, do I have to eat my vegetables?If your mother says you do, you do.
5:31
Well, I did. Uh,
5:34
honey, you tell him.
5:38
Because all living things depend on plants, and you are a living thing. I am? Mm-hmm
5:56
I'm gonna come through here now, okay? Okay so.
6:00
Plants make good food and good oxygen. It's a good thing. They're everywhere. On land, on snow.
6:09
Ants in the water. Come on down.
6:24
Hey, what's he saying?I don't know. I think he's saying most of the plants on Earth live in the ocean. A lot of photosynthesis takes place down here. A
6:36
lot of the plants are microscopic, like algae. There's plenty of sunlight and no need to worry about wind or getting uprooted. It's the ocean, for crying out loud.
6:49
Everything's mechanized but the cows.
6:53
In Megalopolis, it's possible to live a lifetime. Without seeing a food producing animal or a field of growing crops,
7:01
Megalopolis has exchanged the farms of the surrounding countryside or the farms of a nut and the farms of. And never before has there been such great variety in the selection of foods available.
7:21
So where does our food come from anyway? Well, you might think it comes from a grocery store.
7:30
So what do you do?Well, you go to the grocery store, you hunt for your food, you gather it up, and then you buy it. But if we were real hunter-gatherer scavengers like our ancestors, we'd grind our own wheat, grow our own vegetables, squeeze oranges to make orange juice, and we'd hunt for our own tuna. Here,
7:50
tuna. Here, tuna.
7:58
This is taking longer than even I thought it would.
8:12
As I understand it, all living things depend on plants.
8:19
I've been told that they call thisThe food web.
8:26
You can prove that plants need light to grow. Take two onions. Please. Put them each in a glass of water. You might have to stick toothpicks on the sides to get them to stay. Put one on you by a window, where it'll get lots of light.
8:43
Put the other in a dark closet.
8:52
In a week, check 'em out. This onion is growing and it's turned green. The closet onion isn't getting any sunshine, so it's not as green.
9:03
Without sun, the closet onion can't grow. But the window onion keeps getting bigger and bigger. Sunlight, plants needed. Without sun, there'd be no plants. No plants, no food, no food, no food web.
9:17
Whoa!When you're feeding a family of eight, it's important to know what's healthy and good for them. That's why we eat plants. Pass the flowers, please. Hey, that was my room. Now, now, there's enough food for everyone. Thanks to the sun. Plants. To eat them is to love them.
9:42
Plants get the energy they need to live from the sun. Plants make their food using sunlight, carbon dioxide and water.
9:52
The process is called photosynthesis. It means making from light. See, basically plants make sugar like this grape.
10:04
That is sweet. Sugar is made from carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. That's what's in sugar. Now see, animals breathe out carbon dioxide. Animals like you and me. It's the same gas that's in soda water.
10:23
Anyway, here's the deal. All animals, including you and me, need oxygen to breathe. See, animals breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide. Plants breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen. So even if you go, I'm never going to eat my broccoli again, all animals, that includes you, pal. Me, me, me need plants because we need oxygen to breathe. If plants weren't out there making their own food from sunlight, carbon dioxide and water, we animals just couldn't be here. Thank
10:56
you for joining me on
11:01
Consider the Following.
11:11
There's a lot of food in a big city like this. Most of the time, you clean your plate and don't ask questions, even if it leaves a bad taste in your mouth. My name is Luna, Luna Van ****. It's a Dutch name that means photosynthesis.
11:27
I'm a detective.
11:31
You order a pizza?No, but I know where it came from. All right, where'd it come from?Wait right here.
12:16
I got your answer. Your pizza came from plants. From France. France is also famous for the French Revolution. No, I said plants. Listen, wise guy. Everything on it, from the cheese on top to the crust on the bottom, came from plants. There's no eating your way out of this one. Oh, yeah? Well, this one came from Pizza Quicko. And if you want to eat your way out of this one, you're going to have to pay me 750. I'm not paying you anything. I didn't order the pizza. You got to pay
12:43
me. I brought the pizza. What do you mean I got to pay you?I don't have to pay you anything. You ordered the pizza. I did not. Well, somebody ordered.
13:14
So Dave, where are we?We're in the creative house, the land greenhouse at Epicott Center, an agricultural showcase.
13:21
I'm a horticulturalist, so my main function here is to just grow the plants. So what are you showcasing?Showcasing hydroponics, a technique for growing plants using methods other than soil. Some of them are actually dangling in mid-air. It's as far back as I can remember, I like plants. You're more than liking plants, and you grow up and become a horticulturalist.
13:45
Hey yous, get yourselves a pencil. 'Cause you're going to need it later.
13:50
See how fast you can grow your own seeds by planting them in different soils. Get some birdseed and put a few grains each in a glass of damp dirt, orange soda,And one like so. Which seeds do you think will sprout first?Well, try it.
14:12
Try it. Oh, yes, try it. Try it. Try this at home, then write and tell us what happens. We'll send you a cool science kit. Write to Science Kits Post Office Box 3626, Seattle, WA 981243626. Offer valid while supplies last.
14:39
Richie, you are not leaving this table until you eat all of your vegetables. That's not fair. Dad's not eating his vegetables.
15:03
You know, you wouldn't think that there's a lot of aquatic life in the food web in New York City, but here we are standing at the northern tip of of the island, the Big Apple, and and we have lots of things to see and discover. The food web goes on because even though we have all this junk, they have to live. The animals and all all the microorganisms, they all have to live.
15:29
You know, without Mother Nature, like nothing else can survive because without the bottom of the food chain, none of the higher things, which we are, can survive either.
15:42
The food web is really based on a food pyramid. Yeah, with lots of plants at the bottom and just a few big animals like you and me at the top. Let's say we've got a plant. Let's say we've got an apple tree. Well, the apple tree gets the energy that it needs to live from the sun, and it makes apples. Then an animal comes along and eats an apple. Well, that animal is getting the energy that it needs to live from the energy that was in the apple from the plant.
16:08
Then let's say that the animal that ate the apple gets eaten by a bigger animal. Well, the bigger animal is getting the energy that it needs to live from the energy that was in the smaller animal. It's getting the energy that it needs to live from the plants, just indirectly. So you can see that as we go farther and farther up the food pyramid, there's less and less energy from plants to go around. That's why they've got to be a lot more plants than there are animals. The food
16:32
pyramid's got to be a lot wider at the bottom than it is at the top. OK.
16:41
Hi, kids. I'm Uncle Fran. I'm a little ticked off. Sometimes I get mad, but I will always be your friend. Hi, kids. Today's word is food web. I know it looks like 2 words, but it's one idea. Here's a little poem you probably already know. There was an old lady who swallowed a spider that wiggled and jiggled and tickled inside her. Why'd she do that, Uncle Fran? Because that's the way the song goes, Mr. Raccoon. Understand. No. I mean, you wouldn't swallow a spider. That's a gross
17:13
thing. She swallowed the spider to catch the fly. I don't know why she swallowed the fly. I think she'll die. That's so sad, Uncle Fred. It's just a song about a woman not living in a real food web, Mr. Raccoon. It's not real. No, the food web is real, Mr. Raccoon Man. It's swallowing the spider to catch the fly. That doesn't work so well. Get it now. Doesn't make any sense to me. No. I I know something that might help. Ow. How's that?You getting anything?No. I mean, how?
17:41
No. I'll try it again. Well, no, wait, waitYou know, it is starting to come in now. Is it?Yeah. Yeah, I thought it was. Yeah. YeahReal clear. OK.
17:53
A public service announcement for science. You know, not everyone's a professional scientist, but no matter what you do, science affects you. It's an idea that I think is best expressed in a song. Oh, boy.
18:08
In the past and in the future. In the scalpel and the suture.
18:14
In the gas and in the car that makes it run. There's a discipline, it's true, that affects us through and through. It's called science and it's part of everyone. Thank you
18:31
very much. OK, now just imagine the food web. Out here, OK. I mean, I mean, there's some people over there and they're going to grocery shopping at a store and then there's some trucks bringing some groceries to the store. And then over there, some grain elevators. See that the grain, that came from some fields, right?Well, there's probably insects in the field eating some of that grain. Then there's rodents eating those insects. And of course, all that comes from what that those are
18:54
plants, the wheat, that's plants, that's get light from the sun that would be shown over here making the plants grow. And then we animals.
19:04
Who?Me. MeMe
19:06
Not me. We all need the plants to eat. OK, now imagine the food web going over the edge into the water, right?Well, there's there's fish. There's fish by the truckload, by the boatload, by the ocean load out there. And then there's a lot of photosynthesis going on out there, right? OK, look past that. Well, there's mountains. There's a whole other ecosystem over there with a whole bunch of other stuff going on in their own food web over there. But you're always making
19:29
a mess. Don't see all this stuff. You know what that is?That's humans.
19:49
Well, take a look at my plate It's a sight 'cause it's piled with food Well, I'm looking it over and it looks so good 'Cause I got milk, I got meat, I got pasta and bread I got chicken and egg rolls and processed cheese sticks I got ice cream, I got whipped cream, I got tacos, I got fish But none of it seems like a vegetable dish But the truth of the matter of this food situation Is that all of these things get to start with vegetation It's the food web
20:15
It's the food web
20:19
You see, meat has to eat and noodles need wheat. Yeah, we need plants for the things that we eat. 'Cause sugar needs cane and honey needs bees that get pollen from the flowers in the fields and the trees. But maybe now you're asking, hey, what's a plant need?They gotta come from something, yeah, you know they gotta feed. Well, a plant needs water and a plant needs sun. Dirt, carbon, dioxide, and oxygen. It's the food web.
20:44
It's the food web.
20:52
Whoa!
20:58
Food, glorious food! Oh, oh, hi. Well, that's our show. Thanks for watching. If you'll excuse me, I got some serious plans to depend on.
21:09
Whoa!
21:21
Richie, I mean it. You're not going anywhere until you finish those vegetables.
21:40
OK, I'll eat my vegetables. Just please stop doing that.
21:47
Produced in association with the National Science Foundation. Living, spinning round without a sound. Each thing in symbiosis come performing their mitosis. It's all quite plain to see in its delectability. Some say it's verandicular.
22:07
I say that it's quite secular. At the bottom of the chain, I'm afraid you'll rise of luck, 'cause along will come another.
22:23
Please, please just
22:27
stop
22:39
it.
22:48
Please,
22:52
please stop doing that. Go to bed, Richie. Now.
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