When you take in a breath, what happens? If you take a big breath, you can feel air going into your body through your mouth. But why do we breathe? We breathe because our bodies need something in the air called oxygen. Oxygen is like food for our blood. You can’t see oxygen, but it’s there in the air, and people and animals need it to live.
Your body changes oxygen into a different gas called carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is what comes out of your body when you breathe out. You breathe in oxygen, and you breathe out carbon dioxide.
Trees and plants don’t breathe oxygen as we do. They take in carbon dioxide and they put out oxygen — just the opposite of people and animals. So having lots of plants around is good for people and animals — plants and trees make the oxygen that we need to breathe.
Hi,
I really appreciate the objectives of your website. However, as a scientist I think accuracy is of critical importance.
“We breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide. Plants do just the opposite — plants breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen.”
This is simply incorrect. Both plant and animal cells require oxygen and give off carbon dioxide 24-7 while respiring (breathing). Additionally however, plants take carbon dioxide and utilize it in the production of sugar. The byproduct is oxygen. This is not the same process as is respiration. Thanks
Hey Aaron, yep, of course accuracy is key, but we’re also shooting at an audience of 4-12 year old kids, so the big challenge is to make things simple enough to understand without dumbing things down. It’s a tricky balance! Thanks for your comment.
what are plants good for what do they do for the world other than help you breath?
oxygen is really inportant kids so never say it isn’t not if you say it nothing bgoing to happen so it doesn’t really matter if you say that oxygen is not inpartant.
We need trees and plants to help us breathe! this website is wonderful, it helped me find out a lot i never knew! Oxygen is the one thing we need more than ANYTHING! food-water-rest anything… we need oxygen so this is a good resource as to what it is and why we need it so much!
i think trees r gud 4 us..
cuz they giv yew oxygen n thts iz wat we ned 2 survive! n we breathe owt carbon dioxide n ths waht trees n plants need 2 survive.
so its pretty mch 1 of tha thingz we need in our human lives…
n they r also a beautiful part of our lives.
Luvv the site keep it goiin!
plants are cool
i think that airs the most important thing in the world
Thank you for helping me with my assignment on the environment.
Hi Amelia, you’re very welcome. Thanks for your note.
im working on a project on environmental health and i want to talk about the impact of plants on the environment. Anyone have any ideas where to look?
trees r so awesome
good job i used this information for my science homework and i got an a+ thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
thanks. it helped for my assignment ..
we are like plants to plants and plants are like a oxygen tanks to us, if it was not for plants and us we and plnats would not be alive. We need plants to breath and anmials need us to breath and anmials would be dead with out us. Its like a life circlue,we need plants, anmials need us, and last plants need us.
This helped me so much in my speech!
Thank you sooooooooooo much!
Uh, the human body does not change oxygen into carbon dioxide. Air contains these two elements, and more, and the human body uses the oxygen from the air and releases the carbon dioxide back into the environment. I teach four year olds and I think it’s better they learn the right things than be told “something simple” and then have to unlearn it in later school years.
jenie59, the human body does indeed change oxygen into carbon dioxide; this is the function of our lungs and circulatory system. Here’s a wikipedia article on lung function that explains this in more detail: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lung
done with my homework! thanks so much!
Love this website luv it …………………. <3 :0
his helps a lot thanks
Luvv this answer!!! So helpful! Thanks so much.
• They basic need for anyone to survive on earth is the oxygen. The trees provide oxygen to humans while it reduces the carbon dioxide content from the atmosphere.
• Build need to build houses so they need timber which comes from a tree. They need firewood to cook their food so they cut down trees and many a times the people hinder the natural habitat.
• Forest or trees can give us shade and control soil erosion thus it prevent many loses that people can suffer without the trees.
• The trees act as food for many of us. Many people entirely depend on trees to provide them with the output which earns them a lot of money.
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Of course plants help us by, growing food, breathing and is an everyday acquirement. Think of it. If we didn’t have plants, we wouldn’t survive.