RE: Atheism, what led you?
May 12, 2013 at 8:56 pm
(This post was last modified: May 12, 2013 at 9:13 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
(May 11, 2013 at 6:03 pm)Maelstrom Wrote:(May 11, 2013 at 6:00 pm)TosinAsLeader Wrote: um, the grass is green.
Not really. The grass, like all things in the world, is colorless. Our eyes simply perceive colors depending upon how light reflects off objects.
As a point of elaboration. The chlorophyll function in stage 1 photosynthesis (the light reaction) is such that wavelengths of light corresponding to what our color receptors perceive as red and blue are captured - absorbed- as the initiating process which is concentrated in the center of the chlorophyll molecule - the porphyrin ring. This particular range of wavelengths (beta carotene absorbs a slightly different range) is useful to the cell because it is available to the cell (being mainly comprised of carbon and nitrogen, with a chewy magnesium center) as a means of exciting electrons within the cell generating energy, which will later be stored as ATP (adenosine triphosphate) to be consumed during stage 2 photosynthesis, the dark reaction.
None of the parties involved are actually "green" "red" or "blue" -not the plant, not the light- as has already been mentioned. It's simply that when we look at a plant the wavelengths of light that we would -call- red and blue have been consumed. They are not available to be viewed any longer - and so our color receptors do not detect that wavelength-and we confidently state that the grass...is green ( the remainder of the spectrum, due to our being trichromats).
Perhaps amusingly, it's not really the case that light is any given color, but more that our biology has determined that the ability to differentiate between different wavelengths of light is useful. Plants lack this ability, by the way (the ability to differentiate - though they are capable of detection and orientation), but plug along anyway doing something we can currently only dream of. So the usefulness of this ability is clearly situation and species dependent.
(start a seedling in a shoebox and see what color it is, by the way)
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