Question

Critical Thinking! Although sunlight appears white, it is actually made up of many different colors of light: red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet. Design an experiment to determine if chlorophyll can use all the colors of sunlight or if only some colors are absorbed and used by chlorophyll.

Answer 1

Pure pigments absorb a single frequency or color of light. The color of light absorbed by a pigment is merely the complementary color of that pigment. Thus, pure blue pigments absorb yellow light (which can be thought of as a combination of red and green light). Pure yellow pigments absorb blue light.