Question

Why is respiration considered as an exothermic reaction? Explain.

Answer 1

Hint: When you breathe out, try to feel it. The air that comes out of our body when we breathe out is warm. In an exothermic reaction, heat is produced as a by-product of the reaction.

Complete Answer -

We all need the energy to stay alive and we get this energy from the food we eat. There is an entire process which the food undergoes before giving us the energy we require. Let us understand this process in a detailed manner.

-We eat different kinds of food and all these kinds of food have different nutritional values.

-Nutritional value points out the nutritional contents of food and also the amount of nutrition present in particular food and how much that food will impact our body.

-Some foods are rich in protein such as meat, fish, etc., while some are rich in Vitamins like eggs, oranges, etc. Some foods are rich in carbohydrates like rice, wheat, etc.

-Carbohydrates are biomolecules that contain carbon, oxygen and hydrogen. They are sugar or glucose. When we intake carbohydrate-rich food, they are broken down into simpler glucose molecules.

-As we all know in the breathing process we intake oxygen and expel carbon dioxide, the glucose undergoes a combustion process with that oxygen and releases water and carbon dioxide and this is the same carbon dioxide that we breathe out.

-This entire process evolves lots of heat and that is the energy we get from the food. Any reaction that evolves heat as a by-product of the reaction is called an exothermic reaction.

-Therefore, respiration is an exothermic reaction and the heat produced is distributed throughout the body as energy and that is the reason when we breathe out or breath is warm.

Note: Don’t confuse between exothermic and endothermic reactions. They are opposite to each other. As we know the exothermic reaction is followed by the production of heat, but in the endothermic reaction, heat is absorbed from the surroundings and reduces its temperature during the process.