Photosynthesis Formula

What is photosynthesis?

Most living creatures including humans depend on trees and plants for their nutrition and nourishment. Plants generally produce, create and synthesise the food they require and all the other life forms rely on them for growth and survival. Autotrophs are plants also called green plants, that make or rather synthesise the food they require through photosynthesis.

Photosynthesis is a reaction that occurs to produce energy in plants, this is facilitated by the conversion of substrates Carbon dioxide and Water. Sunlight and Chlorophyll further facilitate the conversion of the substrates. This transformation will result in the construction and liberation of energy in the form of glucose and oxygen.

Formula of photosynthesis

The formulation of the photosynthesis reaction was composed based on different experiments being performed by groups of scientists since the 19th century.

Initially, the basic photosynthesis equation for oxygen-dependent organisms was put together as:

CO2 + H2O + Light → (CHO)n + O2

Here,

• CO2 represents Carbon dioxide.

• H2O represents water.

• (CHO)n represents carbohydrates.

• O2 represents oxygen.

Later, a microbiologist named Cornelius van Niel made his studies with Blue-green bacteria and produced a breakthrough result in photosynthesis. He identified that during the process of photosynthesis, hydrogen plays a key role in converting Carbon dioxide to carbohydrates. He formulated the photosynthesis equation as follows:

2H2A + CO2 + Light → 2A + CH2O + H2O

• H2A refers to Hydrogen donors.

• A refers to a broken down product of a hydrogen donor.

Then, certain radioisotopic experiments were performed to analyse and retrieve the complete equation of photosynthesis. The final equation was formulated as:

Light + Chlorophyll + 12H2O + 6CO2  → C6H12O6 + 6O2 + 6H2O 

Here,

• C6H12O6 refers to Glucose.

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Solved examples of photosynthesis:

Here are a few solved examples of photosynthesis:

Question: How can the following photosynthetic reaction be balanced:

3CO2 + 4H2O → C6H12O6 + 6H2O + 6O2

Solution: 

3CO2 + 4H2O → C6H12O6 + 6H2O + 6O2

The above equation can be balanced by increasing the moles of CO2 and H2O.

2(3CO2) + 3(4H2O) → C6H12O6 + 6H2O + 6O2

So, the below equation can be inferred to as the final balanced equation of photosynthesis:

Light + Chlorophyll + 12H2O + 6CO2  → C6H12O6 + 6O2 + 6H2O

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