Wenn man bedenkt, wie Bäume tatsächlich die enorme Größe erreichen, die einige von ihnen erreichen können, könnten Sie glauben, dass das meiste davon das Ergebnis des Bodens ist, in dem sie Pflanzen sind, die aus Sämlingen wachsen. Wenn Sie an die größten Bäume der Welt denken, wie die Mammutbäume und die Mammutbäume, ist es sinnvoll, dass der Boden eine große Rolle bei der Bereitstellung der Nährstoffe spielt, die notwendig sind, um diese natürlichen Riesen zu manifestieren. Es könnte jedoch auch andere Faktoren geben. Schauen wir uns, wo die Bäume tatsächlich ihre Masse bekommen, und es kann nicht nur aus dem umliegenden Boden sein.
Was die meisten Menschen denken
Early Research On The Topic
A scientist by the name of Johann Baptista Van Helmholt decided to figure out this exact question and started with a simple pot of soil. He planted a tree in the pot of soil after measuring the weight of the soil, and took care of a tree for five years. He was very careful to not allow any soil to escape the pot, nor did he add any additional soil during this five year period. At the end of the experiment, the tree had grown, weighing 70 kg, but only 60 g of soil was missing from the pot, clearly showing that the tree did not get its mass directly from the soil.
So What Is The Answer?
Many people believe that the water and nutrients may actually contribute to the enormous size that trees can become. Johann Baptista Van Helmholt actually concluded after his experiment that trees are almost entirely made of air. Others began to realize that perhaps beyond the soil and water that another process was occurring, the process of photosynthesis. It was determined that sunlight was needed to build the mass within the trees, despite the fact that sunlight is not actually matter. Oxygen is another possibility, but what research finally determined is that 95% of all of the mass of a tree is the result of carbon dioxide. This is the gas that humans exhale, as well as most other animals, through the respiration process. In the same way that trees produce oxygen for us that we need to breathe in order to grow, the carbon dioxide has the same effect with trees, helping them to build their mass.
In conclusion, animals breathe out carbon dioxide and lose water, and this is how we lose mass. Conversely, trees take in carbon dioxide and water, and this is how they build mass. And in a strange sense, through this process, we are actually becoming part of the trees.