Location Matters

• Light-Dependent reactions: Party's happening in/on the thylakoid membranes! 🎉
• Light-Independent reactions: Chill time in the stroma lounge. 🛋️

What's going down?

• Photolysis: Splitting water with light! Imagine trying to break a toy using a flashlight. 😜
• Light Absorption: Photons act like energy drinks for electrons, getting them all excited!
• Electron Transport: Think of it as a relay race, but electrons are passing the baton (energy)!
• ATP Synthesis: Energy currency production via chemiosmosis. It’s like converting sunlight into gift cards.
• Reduction of NADP: Giving NADP an extra electron and H+ makes it "reduced". It's getting a little gift!
• Carbon Fixation: Carbon from CO₂ gets attached to a bigger molecule.
• Synthesis: Making sweet stuff like triose phosphate! Baking cookies from CO₂! 🍪
• RuBP's Comeback: It gets regenerated to start the process again.

Light's Role

• Light-Independent reactions are sneaky. They sound like they don't need light, but run out of gas quickly in the dark.
• Light-Dependent reactions are clingy. They need products from their "independent" partner to keep going.
• In a nutshell: These two are in a relationship and rely on each other! 🤝

Light Intensity's Influence

• Low Light: ATP & reduced NADP are like gold (rare). Calvin cycle (turning glycerate 3-phosphate into other compounds) becomes the slowpoke. 🐢
• High Light: Carbon fixation takes its sweet time. Not enough NADP to go around makes light-dependent reactions slow down. Plus, extra light = photosystem's mini light shows called fluorescence! 🌈

How to See Pigments' Favorite Colors

• Pigment Party: Get those pigments from plants (like spinach) using propanone and a bit of sand.
• Spectrophotometer Jam: Test how much each pigment likes certain light colors.
• Chromatography: Separate pigments on paper, then test them individually.

Questions to Ponder

• Compare and contrast the absorption from Figure 42.
• Guess which curve belongs to which leaf based on absorption.
• Why might plants prefer 400–700nm light? 🤔
• Predict the color preferences of beachy brown algae.