We spend a great deal of time exploring, talking and researching about what happens to nature in the fall.

We hypothesized that there was something else inside the leaves besides the green coloring.

 

Our experiment went as follows:

We crunched up leaves with a little water in a food processor. We used goggles to keep our eyes safe! She did this several times with leaves from four different trees.

Mrs. Comeau mixed the gooky green mess with alcohol at her house. Then she put strips from a paper towel into the mixture and left it over night.

The next morning, you could see a line of color, starting with the green, rising up the paper towel. The end color on each of the 4 samples was the same as the fall colored leaf from each tree. WOW!

 

We learned from some further investigation, that the tree has green stuff called chlorophyll in every leaf. This stuff helps the tree make food with the help of the sun, for the tree. In the fall the tree starts to shut down for the winter. The resulting colors come out as the chlorophyll shuts off!

 

 

SCIENCE IS COOL!