What are the differences between a monosaccharide and a polysaccharide? ?

Question

This is one question I just didn't seem to get...help please?

Answer 1

a monosaccharide is one sugar molecule. A polysaccharide is made up of many monosaccharides.

Answer 2

what Kayleigh said is right, but to go into further details:

carbohydrates(mono-, di-, and polysaccharides) are basically just made up of monomers called saccharides.

One(or mono) saccharide is composed of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen(C6 H12 O6).

Disaccharide is composed of two saccharides, hence the name di, which means two.

Poly(meaning many)saccharide is just a macromolecule consisting of more than two saccharides.

hope that helped!  

Answer 3

You just need to look at your prefixes.  A saccharide is just a sugar.  So a monosaccharide (mono=one) would be one of your simple sugars such as glucose.

A polysaccharide (poly=many) would be 3 or more simple sugars bonded together.. like starch or cellulose.