In this video, we're going to begin our introduction to aerobic cellular respiration. Aerobic cellular respiration, as its name implies with the term "aerobic," is an aerobic process itself, and we'll define what aerobic means down below here shortly. But more specifically, aerobic cellular respiration is the aerobic process of breaking down glucose to make lots and lots of ATP or energy for the cell. Really, this is the main purpose of aerobic cellular respiration: to make lots and lots of ATP or energy for the cell. The term aerobic refers to the requirement of the presence of oxygen gas or O2, which is the chemical formula for oxygen gas. Aerobic cellular respiration is an aerobic process, which means that it needs or requires oxygen gas in order to break down glucose and make lots and lots of ATP.
As we move forward in our course, we're going to talk more and more about aerobic cellular respiration, and what we'll learn is that aerobic cellular respiration actually occurs in multiple stages. We'll talk about all of these stages as we move forward. Most of the stages of aerobic cellular respiration occur inside of the mitochondria of the cell. You want to be able to make an association between mitochondria and aerobic cellular respiration. Below, if we take a look at our example image, we'll find the overall chemical equation for aerobic cellular respiration. Notice over here we have an image of the mitochondria of the cell, starting to associate the mitochondria with cellular respiration.
Cellular respiration takes food such as sugar or a monosaccharide called glucose. It takes glucose and is able to convert glucose, along with oxygen gas, into carbon dioxide gas, water, and arguably the most important product, ATP or energy for the cell. Ultimately, what we'll see with cellular respiration is that it takes foods such as glucose, sugars, and oxygen gas from the atmosphere and uses those to create lots and lots of ATP or energy for the cell and then it also creates carbon dioxide and water as byproducts. Cellular respiration, we're showing here as just one reaction arrow, but it turns out that cellular respiration consists of multiple stages. We're going to talk about these stages as we move forward in our course.
This here concludes our brief introduction to aerobic cellular respiration. We'll get to learn more and more as we move forward in our course. So, I'll see you all in our next video.