full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Penny Chisholm: The tiny creature that secretly powers the planet

Unscramble the Blue Letters


So these tiny phytoplankton, collectively, wegih less than one percent of all the plants on land, but anlulany they psottyhehionsze as much as all of the plants on land, including the Amazon rainforest that we consider the lnugs of the planet. Every year, they fix 50 billion tons of carbon in the form of carbon dioxide into their bodies that fdees the ocean ecosystem. How does this tiny amount of bosimas produce as much as all the plants on land? Well, they don't have trunks and stems and flowers and friuts and all that to maintain. All they have to do is grow and divide and grow and divide. They're really lean little photosynthesis machines. They really crank.

Open Cloze


So these tiny phytoplankton, collectively, _____ less than one percent of all the plants on land, but ________ they _______________ as much as all of the plants on land, including the Amazon rainforest that we consider the _____ of the planet. Every year, they fix 50 billion tons of carbon in the form of carbon dioxide into their bodies that _____ the ocean ecosystem. How does this tiny amount of _______ produce as much as all the plants on land? Well, they don't have trunks and stems and flowers and ______ and all that to maintain. All they have to do is grow and divide and grow and divide. They're really lean little photosynthesis machines. They really crank.

Solution


  1. biomass
  2. fruits
  3. weigh
  4. annually
  5. feeds
  6. lungs
  7. photosynthesize

Original Text


So these tiny phytoplankton, collectively, weigh less than one percent of all the plants on land, but annually they photosynthesize as much as all of the plants on land, including the Amazon rainforest that we consider the lungs of the planet. Every year, they fix 50 billion tons of carbon in the form of carbon dioxide into their bodies that feeds the ocean ecosystem. How does this tiny amount of biomass produce as much as all the plants on land? Well, they don't have trunks and stems and flowers and fruits and all that to maintain. All they have to do is grow and divide and grow and divide. They're really lean little photosynthesis machines. They really crank.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
carbon dioxide 3
open ocean 3
ocean ecosystem 3
fossil fuel 2
billion years 2
solar energy 2
chemical energy 2
carbon bonds 2
plant processed 2
human hair 2
shine blue 2
blue light 2
sequenced hundreds 2
human genome 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
open ocean ecosystem 2
shine blue light 2

Important Words


  1. amazon
  2. amount
  3. annually
  4. billion
  5. biomass
  6. bodies
  7. carbon
  8. collectively
  9. crank
  10. dioxide
  11. divide
  12. ecosystem
  13. feeds
  14. fix
  15. flowers
  16. form
  17. fruits
  18. grow
  19. including
  20. land
  21. lean
  22. lungs
  23. machines
  24. maintain
  25. ocean
  26. percent
  27. photosynthesis
  28. photosynthesize
  29. phytoplankton
  30. planet
  31. plants
  32. produce
  33. rainforest
  34. stems
  35. tiny
  36. tons
  37. trunks
  38. weigh
  39. year