Exploring Chlorophyll Fluorescence

To start our experiment we first needed to gather our equipment.

We needed a Conical flask, test tube, funnel, mortar, pestle, iso-propyl-alcohol, UV light, filter paper and three leaves.

The first step of the experiment was extracting the chlorophyll from the leaves. We took our leaves and cut them up into small pieces and put them in Mortar after we had cut up all three of the leaves, Matua then came around with the Iso-propyl-alcohol and poured some into our Mortar with the leaves. Next we used our Pestle to mash up the leaves with the Iso-propyl-alcohol to extract the chlorophyll, and the mixture turned green.

Then you take your filter paper and put it in the funnel then drain out your Chlorophyll (Leaves and Iso-propyl-alcohol mixture) into your Conical flask and wait until all of the mixture has drained. Now you are going to pour it into a test tube.

Then go to a dark area where nothing can be reflected, for this we closed all of the curtains inside our classroom. Then Matua took the UV light and shined it on the test tube with the Chlorophyll inside it. It glowed pink.

           

The reason why the Chlorophyll glows pink/red is because the Chlorophyll absorbs all of the other colours that are getting reflected into it and the only colour that come out is the red, and that’s the colour that is getting reflected into your eyes.

           

To conclude I learnt about how to extract Chlorophyll from leaves and using a Mortar and pestle with Iso-propyl-alcohol then how to drain the Chlorophyll using the funnel and filter paper putting it in a Conical flask then transferring it into a test tube, going into a dark place and shining the UV light onto it to make it glow pink. I learnt heaps about ROY-G-BIV (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet) and how the chlorophyll absorbed all of the other colours and reflected the red.