Monday, 18 May 2015

Rannerdale bluebells 2015



We finally managed to get to Rannedale in the bluebell season. It occurs to me that the same spectrum of sunlight falls on the bluebells, the yellow gorse and the green leaves. They are each doing something different with the light. I know that the leaves absorb the red and blue ends of the spectrum to use the energy for photosynthesis. The leaves reflect the green and this is what we see. The bluebells must reflect the blue end of the spectrum. Presumably they absorb the rest. The only alternative is that they transmit it and I saw no evidence of that. It got me thinking about the spectrum of daylight. To what extend are the colour wavelengths evenly transmitted to the Earth? How does the blue scattering of the sky affect the overall effect? I found this to start my thinking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunlight