In the process of burning wood or coal the large cellulose vaults, composed of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, are broken up, thus allowing the original solar energy, stored up within them as chemical energy, to escape in the form of heat and light. This is the same heat and light deposited there by the sun many years before—in the case of coal, some two hundred million years back. The process of burning thus transforms the chemical energy in the plants back to its original form of light and radiant heat energy. The complex carbon and hydrogen units in the cellulose are broken up, each freed carbon atom uniting within two oxygen atoms in the air to form carbon dioxide again, while two hydrogen atoms unite with one of oxygen to form water. Thus we see that the cellulose vaults are broken up once more into the original building bricks out of which the chemists in the plants had fashioned them. When we eat plant or animal food to get the energy to live by, exactly the same process takes place except at a lower temperature. The sunlight deposit vaults of sugar, starch, and fat, also composed, like cellulose, of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, are broken up by the digestive system into their component parts, thus allowing the original solar energy stored within them to get free in the form of chemical energy, which our body uses in its essential processes. Here, too, the end products are carbon dioxide, which we exhale, and water. About half the energy we thus obtain is used by us for the work we do. The other half is used by the body for building up the tissues burned up as part of the regular wear and tear of life. We thus burn food for our internal energy as we burn cellulose for our external energy. The interesting thing here is that, in both types of burning, fission as well as fusion processes take place. The fission is the splitting of the cellulose, sugar, fats, starches, and proteins into carbon and hydrogen atoms. The fusion part is the union of the carbon and the hydrogen with oxygen to form carbon dioxide and water. The fusion part is just as necessary to release the stored-up solar energy in the wood or coal as is the fission part, for, as everyone knows, unless there is oxygen for the carbon to fuse with, no combustion (burning) can take place and hence no release of energy. The plant vaults would remain closed absolutely tight. At this point two things become clear. We see, in the first place, that whenever we get any kind of energy in any form we do not in any way create any of it. All we do is merely draw on something that is already stored up; in the case of coal and wood by the sun, in the case of uranium and hydrogen by the same power that created the sun and all energy. We draw water from the spring, but we do not make the water. On the other hand, we cannot draw the water unless we first find the spring, and even then we cannot draw it unless we have a pitcher.