About This Lesson
Duration: 2.5 minutes
Grade Level: Appropriate for all ages; content connects to NGSS standards for grades 5 and above
Let's look inside a polyp to see how it helps build a reef. It takes carbon from algae and seawater, turns it into calcium carbonate, and uses this chalky substance to build an internal skeleton.
This visualization showing the interior of the polyp during the skeleton-building process will change your understanding of how hard corals construct entire reefs!
