On 16 Dec 1996 23:49:30 -0800
bluej at juno.com wrote:
>Help??! My biology class has a
question; why does a lot of
chlorophyll
>in a container look red? etc.
You are observing the phenomena
of chlorophyll fluorescence. On
capture of a photon chlorophyll
becomes excited and in theory this
energy is passed into the
photosynthetic pathway. Not all of
this energy goes through these
pathways, however, some is
re-emitted as red light as the
chlorophyll returns to ground state.
The red light corresponds to the
energy loss from the lowest energy
level to ground state, from memory I
think this is 694nm (but my memory
is not perfect). Hope this helps,
most plant texts will have extra
detail.
Best wishes Kevin
Dr Kevin Reiling
Division of Biology
Staffordshire University
ST4 2DE
01782 294746
