Notes: Cycling of Matter

CONSIDER THIS: A carbon atom in your fingernail today might have helped make
up the muscle of a cow a year ago, may have belonged to a blade of grass a month
before that, and may have been a part of a dinosaurs tooth 100 million years ago.
Matter is never used up, it never goes away. It just keeps cycling around and
around.
Knowledge Probe: What do you already know?
1. Define cycle:

2. What is photosynthesis and cellular respiration and how do they cycle

matter?

Article: What did you read?

General:
1. What is the law of conservation of matter?

Carbon Cycling:
1. How do plants obtain carbon?

2. How do animals obtain carbon?

3. Organisms (plants, animals and bacteria) release some of the carbon they
take in. What happens to the carbon they do not release?

4. Carbon can be found in plants and animals. What are three other locations
it can be found? And how does it get there?

Phosphorus Cycling:
1. Where is the majority of phosphorus found?

2. Why is it essential to life?

3. How do organisms (plants and animals) obtain phosphorus?

4. How does phosphorus return to the soil?

Nitrogen Cycling:
1. Nitrogen is very abundant in the atmosphere, why is it scarce in the
biosphere?

2. What process is necessary for nitrogen to become usable in the biosphere?

In what two naturally occurring ways does this happen?

3. What is the type of nitrogen that can be taken in by plants?

4. How do humans affect the nitrogen cycle?

Video 1: Carbon Cycle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFE9o-c_pKg and

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzImo8kSXiU
1. What things have carbon in them?

2. How do human activities affect the carbon cycle?

Carbon Cycling Game

1. Play the game.
2. Fill out the table to help explain the game.
Name of
Group
Atmosphere

Water

Algae

Marine Snails

Sediments

Options for
Carbon Flows

Explanation for Carbon Flows

and Rocks

Trees

Caterpillars

3. Complete the diagram by drawing arrows to connect the different roles.

Atmosphe
re

Ocea
n

Lan
d

Video 2: Phosphorus Cycling https://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=_IBx0zpNoEM
1. Circle the spheres in which phosphorus can be found
a. Geosphere
b. Biosphere
c. Hydrosphere
d. Atmosphere
2. How do humans get the phosphorus they need to live?

3. How do people impact the phosphorus cycle?

4. What negative effect does human impact have on the ecosystem?

Video 3: The Nitrogen Cycle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaFVfHftzpI

1. Where do we find Nitrogen?

2. Why cant we use the nitrogen as it is in the atmosphere?

3. Why do all living things need nitrogen?

4. How does Nitrogen become fixed?

a. How do plants get nitrogen?

b. How do animals get nitrogen?

5. How does the nitrogen get into the soil?