Out of thin air!

An eighteenth-century botanist planted a willow sapling in a barre after weighing both the sapling and the soil.

After the sapling had grown for five years, he weighed the tree and discovered that it had increased in mass by 195 pounds. Upon weighing the soil he was surprised to find that it had decreased in weight by only 13 ounces.

The question is, where did a 195-pound tree come from if not from the soil?

The only answer is, out of thin air!

And it is by delving into thin air itself that we discover an explanation for this mystery. During the light of day, a tree absorbs carbon dioxide through its leaves. Then at night, during the dark phase of photosynthesis, the carbon dioxide molecule is separated into one carbon atom and two oxygen atoms.

The tree releases the oxygen atoms back into the air and forms the carbon atoms into a six-carbon simple sugar ring which is a building block for cellulose.

The hidden beauty in this system is the deconstruction, release and recombination of basic elements from one structure to another. The mass and structure of the tree are the results of this mysterious process.