Finding Sam Breakstone: Finding Grass

Previously on Finding Sam Breakstone:

The sun produces energy in the form of sunlight. People need energy. People can't use sunlight. The sun is absolutely useless to the human race.

Luckily, there are some species that are a little more efficient than we are.

Almost all plants are capable of photosynthesis. The word itself means "making stuff from light." In scientific terms, the chemical reaction is described as:

6CO₂ + 6H₂O + Sunlight ® C₆H₁₂O₆ + 6O₂

Plants absorb carbon dioxide from the air, mix it with water from the ground, expose the whole thing to sunlight and make sugar, which they keep, and oxygen, which they excrete.

How cool is that? Have you enjoyed breathing today? That's plant poop you're breathing. Is that a particularly sweet apple you're eating? A plant made it out of sunlight and air.

How much mass do plants create from thin air: 100,000,000,000,000 kilograms a year or 220 trillion pounds. And that's just counting the weight of the carbon, it doesn't even factor in all the water. In comparison, all of the people on earth total weigh 1 trillion pounds.

Plants eat sunlight using chlorophyll, which is green. Every green leaf is a solar cell. Incidentally, purple absorbs light even better than green. Some scientists think the world was once purple .

"I made this out of sunlight. Enjoy your brunch!"

Which brings us, naturally, to grass. No, the other kind.

Green grass - and there are thousands of species - is found just about everywhere. If there is land, there is most likely grass. In many habitats, it is the dominant vegetation. And there's good reason. Each blade of grass is its own plant - a single solar cell. Nothing is wasted on making bark or fruit or flowers. It's just a tiny panel turning sunlight into food.

There's just one problem. Green grass, of which there is a lot, is entirely inedible by humans. We cannot break down the cell walls. All of the nutrition in grass is completely unavailable to us.

To review: The sun is the source of all the energy in the world,. We can't eat sunlight. Green grass is relatively efficient at turning solar energy into food energy. We can't eat grass, either.

If only there were some way to convert green grass into something we can eat.

And if only it had something to do with the dairy industry ...

Next: What this all has to do with the dairy industry.