Synthesis and Breakdown

Explorations in Ecology: Transformative Adventures for All of Us

Note: For now, this blog is a serialization of a book titled Field Trips for All of Us: Transformative Adventures for Children and Their Adults. Here is the preface. The first field trip is Taking Education Outside.

Introduction

I have a T-shirt that says, “At a chemical level, I’m really quite busy.” This is a huge understatement. About 37,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 chemical reactions happen in the human body every second—more than the total number of stars in our galaxy! All of them involve either taking molecules apart or putting them together. Sometimes when we wonder what we're here for, we think, perhaps it’s to input patterns, change them by taking them apart and putting them together, and then output them back into the universe.

Activity

This field trip makes a great follow-up to We’re All Made from the Same Stuff. If you haven’t done that field trip yet, you might want to start there and return here afterward.

I like to give kids an opportunity to see how synthesis and breakdown work together with the following game I’ve played with kids 4 years old and up (but it might work with younger children). I give the kids a collection of Lego bricks (anywhere from 30 to hundreds of pieces depending on how long you want them to play) and ask them to free-build anything they want. There is only one rule. Once you put two pieces together, you can’t take them apart. Kids are generally untroubled by this one rule at the beginning of their play; being “now” focused as they tend to be. They may get frustrated before the end of the game when they accidentally put two pieces together and you remind them that they can’t take them apart. But they always seem mighty surprised once all of their pieces are attached. The general sentiment I’ve heard at that transition time is, hey, we can’t play anymore without taking something apart.

That’s when I talk with them about the importance of breakdown! Synthesis is the process of putting things together. Breakdown is the process of taking things apart. Without breakdown, nothing that is synthesized (put together) would ever get taken apart and the by-products of life (including dead bodies and excrement) would remain whole and would never release the nutrients they contain back into the soil.

Completing the above activity will give kids a basic understanding of the processes of synthesis and breakdown. Now it's time to enrich that understanding by talking about them in the context of other activities. For example, when you’re out sauntering with your kids after completing the Lego activity, you can support them by looking for examples of signs of breakdown and synthesis. For example, a bird’s nest is an indication that a bird put a nest together and new growth on a plant is evidence that the plant synthesized a bunch of new material. A rotting log is a sign that insects and microorganisms are at work decomposing the log and we help decompose leaves and sticks when we step on them as we walk through the forest.

Another great follow-up to the Lego activity is to explore a top-mulched garden or a compost pile and talk with your kids about what’s going on in there in terms of synthesis and breakdown- both are happening! Macro-invertebrates like insect larvae, adult insects, and worms are breaking organic matter down into smaller pieces. Microorganisms like fungi and bacteria are breaking organic molecules (molecules built around carbon chains) down into inorganic molecules (smaller molecules not built around carbon). All living things in the mulch or compost are also synthesizing biomolecules to maintain themselves.

Educational Tips

Play is such an important part of learning. All of our field trips work best when us guides maintain a playful attitude, leave time for play, and pay attention to the kids' play for insight into what is going on in their minds and hearts. In this field trip, this suggestion might play out as you giving the kids all of the time they need to assemble their final structure, to watch and listen to their self-talk and body language as they build, and to take time to truly appreciate their creativity.

In the Educational Suggestions section of the field trip We’re All Made of the Same Stuff, we discuss the idea that the assemble-one-piece-at-a-time factory pattern manifests in factory schools as mastering one sub-skill at a time. The corresponding forest pattern is emergence-from-opportunistic-encounters. This pattern manifests in unschooling as letting children learn as they wander. The synthesis of these two patterns in educational environments manifests in different ways. In terms of this field trip manifests as us guides suggesting an activity like the Lego activity, supporting kids' engagement in and making sense of the activity, and bringing up the concept over time as we bump into opportunities in the forest.

Some Nature Science Stuff

Synthesis and breakdown happen at many levels; from the atomic to the astronomic. For example, both atomic fusion: the process of making larger atomic nuclei from smaller ones, and planetary formation: the process of space dust coming together to form increasingly larger chunks of space matter, are examples of synthesis. Between the atomic and astronomic, life dances, putting things together and taking them apart. Photosynthesis is the process of making sugar from carbon dioxide and water using the energy of the sun. Dehydration synthesis is the process of making larger bio-molecules from smaller ones. The decomposition of organic matter back into minerals that happens on the forest floor, the digestion of food, and the metabolism of glucose in cells are all examples of breakdown processes. As you can see, scientists use a variety of different words to describe specific synthesis and breakdown reactions. And, the fact remains that in a general way, what life does is put things together and break them apart to create again. 

Wrap Up

Synthesis and breakdown are two universal processes. On and near the surface of the Earth, life plays a major role in these processes. Living beings synthesize large biological molecules like sugars from smaller molecules and break down larger molecules back into smaller ones. This is analogous to building larger structures from Lego pieces and taking those structures apart. Given a limited supply of Lego pieces (analogous to the limited supply of atoms on Earth), you gotta take things you’ve built apart, or stop playing and simply admire what you’ve built. While many humans seem to value the processes of synthesis (e.g., growth and development), life on Earth would have ceased a long time ago if not for the complementary breakdown processes of decay and decomposition. Nicolette connects with this concept by fantasy author Robert Jordan, “The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again…There are neither beginnings nor endings to the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning.” This breaking and creating continues to show us how important the journey and noticing our present is among this constantly weaving and dancing web of interdependence we live in.