• Question: Why is grass green

    Asked by desk520muon on 19 Dec 2024.
    • Photo: Tia Salter

      Tia Salter answered on 19 Dec 2024:

      Grass needs to absorb sunlight and produce its food by photosynthesis. It does this by making a green pigment (called chlorophyll) that is really good at absorbing sunlight 🙂

    • Photo: Steve Potterill

      Steve Potterill answered on 9 Jan 2025:

      The patterns and spacing of molecules that make up grass are such that grass absorbs most wavelengths of light except green, and so reflects the green wavelength which we then see as its colour.
      Everything we can see is made up of atoms. Atoms group together as molecules, so that every different substance will have a different set of molecules.
      When we see an object and its colour, what we’re seeing is light reflected off of it. Sunlight contains the whole spectrum of light colours. When light hits an object, different wavelengths are either absorbed or reflected (or if the object is transparent, the light can be refracted). The patterns and spacing of molecules that make up a substance and an object determine which wavelengths are reflected.

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