Monday, August 8, 2011

Why are leaves of a tree green at night?

So I have read this extract where it says leaves get their prominent green color from the pigment chlorophyll. This pigment absorbs sunlight energy. By not going into too much detail, the chlorophyll basically absorbs a quantum of energy in the photon particles. Like this more the chlorophyll more the energy being absorbed, and more its photosyntheses. However chlorophyll absorbs only a specific wavelength/frequency of the light, among which the green spectrum of white light is not absorbed. This is reflected of the leaf, hence giving it the green apperance. Now my question, is why at night too, does the leaves have a green(dark green) color, even though there is no sunlight for it to reflect the green color?.

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