EVERYDAY SCIENCE

Detailed explanation-1: -Animals that eat plants digest the sugar molecules to get energy for their bodies. Respiration, excretion, and decomposition release the carbon back into the atmosphere or soil, continuing the cycle.

Detailed explanation-2: -Carbon moves from plants and animals to soils. When plants and animals die, their bodies, wood and leaves decays bringing the carbon into the ground. Some is buried and will become fossil fuels in millions and millions of years. Carbon moves from living things to the atmosphere.

Detailed explanation-3: -Soil carbon can occur as organic and inorganic carbon forms. Organic carbon includes decaying plant matter, soil organisms and microbes, and carbon compounds such as sugars, starches, proteins, carbohydrates, lignins, waxes, resins and organic acids.

Detailed explanation-4: -Carbon enters the soil through the decomposition of organic material. When plants die or leaves fall off of trees, for example, they fall to the soil and break down. The carbon that was in those plants or leaves enters the soil as the organic material decomposes.

Detailed explanation-5: -Carbon moves from land plants into the atmosphere through the various processes of the carbon cycle, and two specific ways are cellular respiration and combustion.