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384  Outline the differences in absorption

Page history last edited by choijane12@gsiscommunity.kr 13 years, 11 months ago

 

Go back to 3.8 assessment statements

 

"3.8.4  Outline the differences in absorption of red, blue and green light by chlorophyll"

 

  • Light is a form of the elctromagnetic radiation produced by the Sun.
  • Visible light forms only a small part of the total electromagnetic radiation. The visible light usually is shown as white light. 
  • When the white light is projected through a prism, a continuous spectrum of light is shown as colors of a rainbow. 

 

 

http://www.gamonline.com/catalog/colortheory/images/spectrum.gif                                        http://click4biology.info/c4b/3/images/3.8/absspec.gif

 

  • Since different colors have different wavelengths, wavelengths of red, blue and green lights are all different.
    • Wavelength of red light: approximately 650-700nm
    • Wavelength of blue light: approximately 450-500nm
    • Wavelength of green light: approximately 525-575nm
    • (The less wavelength, the more energy there is.) 
  • Light apsorption in photosynthesis involves chemical substances called pigments. 
  • In photosynthesis,  not all the colors of the spectrum presented as white light are absorbed equally by chlorophyll. Some colors are even transmitted/reflected rather than being absorbed.
    • A pigment that does not absorb visible light apears to be white or transparent.
    • A pigment that absorbs all the colors appears to be black.
    • A pigment that absorbs all the colors except blue light appears to be blue since the blue light is reflected and passes into our eyes. 
  • In the ranges of the spectrum, chlorophyll absorbs light energy most strongly in blue and red lights.
  • The green light is reflected instead of being absorbed since the color of plants and their chlorophyll is green. 

Comments (1)

jeonelizabeth12@gsiscommunity.kr said

at 7:34 pm on Mar 16, 2011

Jane; wouldn't
http://click4biology.info/c4b/3/images/3.8/absspec.gif
this picture more easy to see all the differences in absorption??
The graph shows in which wavelength the plants absorb the light most and x-axis also shows the color for corresponding wavelength!

Thank you :)

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