Biology  by Bradford
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C4.2 Transfers of energy and matter: grass skirts

20 quick questions on transfers of energy and matter, each answered in a word or two. Print a sheet for each team, a key for the checker and a tick sheet, then tape the sheets to the board and race.

How it runs

  1. SnipA runner cuts one strip off the bottom of their team’s sheet.
  2. Answer as a pairBack at the table, they write the answer on the strip. No books.
  3. Get it checkedThe checker reads it against the key: you, or a student holding it.
  4. Back for the nextA tick earns the next strip. Wrong? Back to the table to try again.

The questions on this sheet

The checker’s key, with every answer, prints with the sheets.
  1. Main energy source of most ecosystems
  2. Linear sequence of who eats whom
  3. Interlinked feeding relationships
  4. Feeding position in a food chain
  5. Second trophic level, feeding on producers
  6. Lost by respiration and never recycled
  7. Fuel reacting with oxygen, releasing CO₂
  8. Coal, oil or natural gas
  9. Energy and matter both enter and leave
  10. Energy can enter and leave, matter cannot
  11. Producer that fixes carbon using light
  12. Fixes carbon by oxidizing inorganic ions
  13. Eats dead matter, e.g. an earthworm
  14. Absorbs food digested outside its body
  15. Stacked bars of kJ m⁻² yr⁻¹ by level
  16. Total biomass made by photosynthesis
  17. GPP minus losses to plant respiration
  18. Biomass gained by consumers
  19. Ecosystem taking in more CO₂ than it emits
  20. Mauna Loa record of rising CO₂

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