Biological Energy Use, Cellular Processes Of
Just as an internal combustion engine requires fuel to do work, animals need fuel to power their body processes. Animals take in complex molecules as food and break them down to release the energy they contain. This process is called "catabolism." Animals use the energy of catabolism to do work and to assemble complex molecules of their own from simple building blocks, a process called "anabolism." The sum of anabolism and catabolism is "metabolism," a broad term that includes all chemical reactions in the body.
Living Systems Follow the Rules of Thermodynamics
Living organisms are extremely complex. Perhaps this is the reason we often forget that all animals, including people, are made up entirely of chemicals and that these chemicals react with each otheraccording to the same rules that govern chemical reactions in test tubes. Indeed, as recently as the 1800s some scientists believed that living organisms contained a "vital force" not found in inanimate objects that was necessary for life and controlled life processes. This idea, known as vitalism, is now rejected by science because this vital force has never been found and we can explain the chemical reactions in the body without resorting to the mystical thinking inherent in vitalism.
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