Fun Fact: No matter how much science has advanced, nothing synthetic has been able to replicate the efficiency of a biological process. 

The new fad nowadays is being “green,” and I am all for that notion and its my favorite color! But this most current hot topic stems from chemistry, of course. Being all “crunchy” means that we produce less CO2 (carbon dioxide from this point onwards) which in turns leads to more oxygen (O2). The ideal process that this term comes from is photosynthesis. This process only happens in plants where an organelle (a small but essential part to a plant cell that is most likely a chloroplast) takes in CO2 and creates O2 as a byproduct. This is where we get our oxygen. Up to this point this has been basic biology, but remember we are talking about chemistry! Do you know why plants are the color green? Because of chloroplasts.

Light is one of the most complex concepts that the only logical reasoning for its characteristics came from the combination of two competing theories, which ended up being that it is a mixture of waves and particles. This implies that it can “flow” through a room, but can also bounce off a solid object and the color we see is the frequency or wavelength of light that is not absorbed by the environment. Therefore white is when none of the wavelengths are absorbed and black is when they are all taken in, for example the background on this page. With this logic we can see that chloroplasts are green because they reflect back the green color. So a little recap-being green refers to being efficient for the environment, which comes from the most efficient process known, photosynthesis, which happens in green plants because the tool used for this event happens to absorb all colors except green. 

Wouldn’t it be awesome if we could all produce our own oxygen simply by having an extra part of our cell that happens to create it for us? It would mean we would all have to literally be green, but hey I think it’s worth it!

On a separate note: I forgot to mention that I am always up for suggestions on topics to write about, or clarifications for that matter :)