| When you leave a piece of cardboard on your lawn for a few days, the area underneath soon becomes yellow. What has happened to the green? How does chlorosis come about? Do each of the many chloroplasts inside the cells become less green as shown in the upper left, or do the chloroplasts become fewer in number (upper right) giving the overall plant the appearance of being so much less green that the basic pale yellow of protoplasm is the only color left?
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| DO THIS:
You must acquaint yourself with a microscope to be sure that you are able to see chloroplasts within cells. Then you should set up a controlled experiment: take, for example, two clumps of sod, and place one in the dark and the other in the light to which it is previously accustomed. Of course, don't forget to occasionally water them both! About every day, take samples and microscopically inspect them. Count the numbers of chloroplasts in each of many cells and graph that averaged data versus time. Make judgments about how green the cells are: dark, moderate, pale, no green at all.
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