Food has chemical potential energy, which is the energy stored in the bonds between two atoms. This energy is released when what occurs?

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Physics

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18 January, 06:08

Food has chemical potential energy, which is the energy stored in the bonds between two atoms. This energy is released when what occurs?

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Maggie Simmons · Answer 1

This energy is released after a series of processes beginning with digestion to respiration.

Food molecules are first broken to their monomer units as they go through the digestive system. Carbohydrate are broken down to single glucose units. The glucose is then carried by blood to all the cells of the body.

Each cell takes in glucose and breaks it down to provide ATP, the form of energy that cells utilize. The chemical energy in glucose is released when it is broken down in cellular respiration which has three stages namely glycolysis, Krebs cycle and electron transport chain, to yield at least 36 molecules of ATP from a single molecule of glucose.