The Changing of Seasons

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The Changing of Seasons
Justin Kaplan
1/19/2012
The work reported herein was supported by the
National ScienceFoundation, award 0841377,
through a grant to Temple University.The
opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the
position of thesupporting agencies and no
official endorsement should be inferred.
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What is color?

• White light is really the entire visible
  spectrum
• Short waves violet-blue-green high energy,
  dont go as far
• Long waves red-orange low energy, travel
  farther

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What is color?
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What is color?
It is something that we perceive. The nerves in
our eyes see a certain wavelength and our brain
says that is green at the same time blending
the light we see into one image.
A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande
Jatte by George Seurat
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What is color?
Chemical compounds that reflect light are called
Pigments. More important than reflecting light
is the ability of pigments to absorb certain
light wavelengths.
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Sunlight is gathered by chlorophyll and the
energy is then given to compounds in the
chloroplasts to make glucose and oxygen
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The days start getting shorter, the temperature
is starting to get cooler and the tree begins to
hibernate for the winter. They stop producing
chlorophyll and begin to live off the food stores
that they have created during summer.
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Carotenoids
Orange
Yellow
Reddish Pink
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Carotenoids are pigments in the plant that
reflect different colors other than green.
They do not play a direct role in
photosynthesis, meaning they do not transfer the
energy they gather from light directly to the
photosynthetic pathway. They in turn transfer
their energy to chlorophyll which then gives its
energy to the photosynthetic pathway.
They do not play a direct role in photosynthesis,
they transfer their energy to chlorophyll
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Fun Fact
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Pigment extraction lab