Energy Flow In An Ecosystem

Summary

This video, "Energy Flow in Ecosystem" explains the importance of energy and how it is transferred in a very simple way so that very young kids would be able to understand with ease.  At the beginning of the video, it explains that energy is used for all of life's processes.  Next, it states that producers such as plants use the sunlight energy and combines it with water and carbon dioxide in a process called photosynthesis (0:59).  Then, a primary consumer, such as a giraffe eats the plant and uses the energy it gets from the plant to carry out its life processes (1:04).  Finally, a secondary producer, lion, eats the primary consumer,giraffe, and uses the energy for its cell processes (1:09).  Near the middle of the video, it addresses the fact that only 10% of energy actually makes it from organism to organism, which means that 90% of energy is lost during the transfer (1:34).  Basically, the more times that energy is transferred, then there is less energy available for the next consumer.  This energy transfer is demonstrated with a model called the energy pyramid (1:42). 

Relevance:

In class, we spent two weeks learning about the different parts that make up a food chain such as the producers and the primary and secondary consumers.  After learning the basics, we went further and learned about how energy is transferred between organism and organism.  This led to the heated debate in class over the topic of what type of consumption would help the environment.  In the end, it was decided that if all humans were vegetarians (primary consumers) then the environment would be preserved from destruction because in order to provide enough food for all the livestock, mass amounts of land needed to be cultivated to supply enough energy to maintain these animals.  Contrary to that point, if all humans got their energy directly from plants, then they would cut out the middleman (livestock) and create a more efficient way to get energy, which slows down the destruction of the land.  

Video Information:
URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=De_53QflEXQ&feature=relmfu

Author of Video: makemegenius

Date of Publication: June 17th, 2012