What are trees made of? Where does their mass come from?

We often see huge trees around us, ever thought what those trees eat to gain such tremendous structure and mass?

Well… We see the roots of the trees going deeper into the soil and the fair guess is, the trees may gain their mass from the soil. But that isn’t the case here. The trees only take a little amount of required nutrients and energy from the soil, water and sunlight.

Somewhere around 1600’s, a scientist called Jan Baptist van Helmont researched on mass of trees and performed an experiment, wherein he took a pot full of soil and weighed it. He grew a tree for 5 years in that soil. He took a strict care of the soil in the pot. After 5 years the mass of soil reduced just by a few grams and the weight of tree was a few kilograms.

Aren’t we missing one important ingredient here? You guessed it, that’s “Carbondioxide”. And let’s get to the answer now, trees are made of Carbondioxide!!

And yeah, we exhale carbondioxide and loose mass. Where as the trees inhale the carbondioxide we exhaled, to gain mass.

So, indirectly we are becoming trees;)