why does a leaf look green?

Question

any object is visible to us when light falls on it. a light ray consist of the colour of vibgyor . when light rays fall on a leaf it absorbs all other light except green .green colour is reflected by it and hence it looks green in colour.

Answer 1

The simple answer is that plants are green because they have green Chloroplasts (organelles that carry out photosynthesis).

But why are Chloroplasts green? Chloroplasts are green because they contain the green pigment chlorophyll in their thylakoid membranes. Chlorophyll is a pigment that absorbs red and blue light.


Find out more and details with pictures-

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Biology,_Answering_the_Big_Questions_of_Life/Photosynthesis

Answer 2

Many people have answered this question basically correctly.

But I'm gunning for a 'best answer' so, I'm going to try to explain this a bit more in depth.

Chlorophyll is a chemical that causes a chemical change in the air we breathe.

A good portion of our air is Carbon Dioxide. (CO2) Chlorophyll uses the energy from the sun as a catalyst to split the carbon from the oxygen in the carbon dioxide. It takes in the carbon to get bigger. (Remember that all life on Earth is carbon-based? This is where we get the carbon from.) The waste product is O2.

This is a damn good thing because O2 happens to be the oxygen that animals need to breathe.

Furthermore, there's a really cool and easy science experiment that you can do to see this process happening.

Take a green leaf. (Actually, take several.) Tear them up into little tiny pieces and put them in a clear glass container. Soak them overnight in acetone. (Nail-polish remover) The acetone destroyes the lining of the cell-wall, which releases the chlorophyll. In the morning, the solution should have a greenish tone. That green is the chlorophyll which has been released.

Now comes the cool part: Shine a bright flashlight through the glass to the chlorophyll solution. The area where the light hits will turn a reddish color. That is actually the photosynthesis process taking place.

Ain't science great?

Quill.

Answer 3

It is basically because of the pigment chlorophyll in the food preparing part- leaf. But when a spectrum of 7-colour light falls on the leaf, it absorbs all other six colours except for Green.

Answer 4

The above answer covers the light issue well but the reason that green is the only colour not to be absorbed is due to the amounts of chlorophyll found in leaves. This gives the green colour and allows photosynthesis.

Answer 5

Plants make food in their leaves using energy from the sun. How do they take the sun's energy and change it into food? They use a molecule called chlorophyll that is present in the leaves and makes them look green in colour. Chlorophyll captures energy from the sun by absorbing rays of light that travel in waves.

Light travelling in a wave has a wavelength, which is a measure of the cycles of the wave. Light comes in different wavelengths, which to us look like different colours of the rainbow. Each col or of light has it's own unique wavelength. The reason we see a rainbow of different colours is that each wavelength of light is separated from the others when they travel through the droplets of rain water, revealing a rainbow of different colours.

How do plants absorb different wavelengths of light? There are two types of chlorophyll, chlorophyll a and chlorophyll b, that each absorb different wavelengths of light and work together to give the plant energy to use to make food. Plants need to continuously make the chlorophyll in their leaves in response to light. In this way, the light acts as a signal to the leaf to make more chlorophyll.

Answer 6

This is due to the chlorophyll. Chlorophyll is a green photosynthetic pigment found in most plants, algae, and cyanobacteria. Chlorophyll absorbs most strongly in the blue and red but poorly in the green portions of the electromagnetic spectrum, hence the green color of chlorophyll-containing tissues like plant leaves.

Answer 7

A leaf looks green cause it haz a chemical called chlorophyll whch helps in makin food 4 the plant and it looks green.

Answer 8

a leaf looks green because it is a producer in the food chain. So it has chlorophll in it. A substance that makes plants look green.

Answer 9

in case you have total branches that have all green leaves, you have waited too long.... you stand to lose the form of the tree in case you eliminate all of a branch.... I also have a Butterfly variegated maple that has , here and there, tufts of all green leaves... those i do no longer ideas removing as I see them as their loss does not replace the traditional seem of my tree... no longer as much as removing an entire branch might.... if I have been you, i might attempt to locate an expert in eastern Maples and seek for advice from with that person on what to do with your particular style of tree to do suitable with the aid of it......

Answer 10

Bravo! You've answered to your own question. Congrats!