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2. Kraft Foods has released a new blue diet Kool-Aid flavor utilizing a sweetener that achieves the same sweetness as sucrose with 1/10 the amount (by weight) of non-metabolizable sweetener. You rush out to buy some, mix it up, but don't like the taste. As it is Green Week, you pour the pitcher of Kool Aid on the roots of one of your houseplants to avoid wasting the water. The plant responds as is if it was watered with clear water and is otherwise unaffected. However, a few days later you notice that the leaves and flowers are blue. Worse still, you still have this large container of Kool-Aid. So, you decide to experiment by adding sugar to the mix. The result is sweeter, but the Kool-Aid still tastes terrible. Once again, you pour the pitcher of Kool-Aid on the plant roots. This time, the plant wilts and the leaves don't turn blue. You water the plant and it is restored to health, but the leaves only turn slightly blue. What are the biophysical principles that are likely to be contributing to what you have observed?

Explanation / Answer

The answer for the first part.

1. The reason for leaves and flowers turning blue is due to artificial sweetener which is not metabolized by the plants as normal sugars due to which they are not able to produce the chlorophyll which is green in color. Instead, they produce phycocyanin molecule which is blue in color and also absorbs at a lower wavelength.

The answer for the second part.

2. When you add more sugar to the water and feed the plants, they go into an osmotic shock due to the presence of more sugars in the water. Due to which the water is lost from the plants and they start to wilt. This happens due to the presence more solute (sugar) outside and they tend to lose water from the leaves and flowers.

When you add pure water back they regain the original concentration and leaves come back to the same condition. The leaves only slightly being blue to due to the presence of trace amounts of the artificial sweetener in them.

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