The Changing of Seasons

1. 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.

2. What is color? • “White” light is really the entire visible spectrum • Short waves = violet-blue-green; high energy, don’t go as far • Long waves = red-orange; low energy, travel farther

3. What is color?

4. 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 byGeorge Seurat

5. 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.

6. Sunlight is gathered by chlorophyll and the energy is then given to compounds in the chloroplasts to make glucose and oxygen

9. 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.

10. Carotenoids Orange Yellow Reddish Pink

11. 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

12. Fun Fact

13. Pigment extraction lab