--- title: Leaves, fruit and colour in nature — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Leaves, fruit and colour in nature», a lesson of the chemistry course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: In autumn you kick through piles of yellow, orange and red leaves. --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chemistry/28-colour-in-nature/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Chemistry](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chemistry/) / Leaves, fruit and colour in nature # Leaves, fruit and colour in nature Lesson 28 of the chemistry course of Mova's primary school: 18 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/chemistry/28-colour-in-nature/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chemistry/28-colour-in-nature/0/) — In autumn you kick through piles of yellow, orange and red leaves. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chemistry/28-colour-in-nature/2/) — Most colours in nature are pigments, coloured chemicals that soak up some colours of light and send back the rest. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chemistry/28-colour-in-nature/3/) — A leaf's chlorophyll soaks up red and blue light and sends back green, so the leaf looks green. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chemistry/28-colour-in-nature/4/) — Food can change colour too: a tomato turns from green to red as it ripens, and a flamingo turns pink from the pink pigments in the shrimps and tiny algae it eats. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chemistry/28-colour-in-nature/5/) — Some colours are not chemicals at all. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chemistry/28-colour-in-nature/6/) — A beetle's rainbow shell, the blue sky and a rainbow are made by light bouncing, scattering and bending, not by any coloured stuff. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chemistry/28-colour-in-nature/7/) — Chlorophyll is the green pigment of leaves; it soaks up red and blue light, reflects green, and the plant uses the light's energy to make its food. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chemistry/28-colour-in-nature/8/) — In autumn the chlorophyll breaks down, and the yellow and orange pigments that were there all summer show through; red comes from new pigments some trees make in autumn. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chemistry/28-colour-in-nature/9/) — As a tomato ripens its green fades and a red pigment called lycopene builds up; tomatoes ripen faster next to bananas because bananas give off a gas called ethylene. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chemistry/28-colour-in-nature/10/) — Carrots are orange because of beta-carotene, which the body turns into vitamin A, needed for the eyes. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chemistry/28-colour-in-nature/11/) — Carrots help your eyes only if you lack vitamin A; the story that carrots gave pilots night vision is usually said to have been spread in the Second World War to hide the use of radar. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chemistry/28-colour-in-nature/12/) — Flamingos get their pink from pigments in the shrimps and algae they eat; fed without those pigments, they slowly turn white. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chemistry/28-colour-in-nature/13/) — The rainbow shine of some beetles, peacock feathers and butterfly wings comes from tiny layered structures that reflect light like a soap bubble, not from pigment. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chemistry/28-colour-in-nature/14/) — The sky is blue because the air scatters blue light much more than red light; at sunset the light passes through more air, the blue is scattered away and reds remain; with no air to scatter light, as on the Moon, the daytime sky is black. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chemistry/28-colour-in-nature/15/) — A rainbow appears when raindrops bend sunlight and split it into its colours; you see one only with the Sun behind you. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chemistry/28-colour-in-nature/16/) — Blood is always red: darker red when it carries less oxygen, bright red when it carries more; it is never blue inside the body. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chemistry/28-colour-in-nature/17/) — Veins look blue through the skin because of the way skin lets through and scatters light. - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chemistry/28-colour-in-nature/18/) — Octopuses have tiny colour sacs in their skin that muscles stretch open or squeeze shut, and some can match their background in less than a second. - ← previous: [Dyes, inks and colouring](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chemistry/27-dyes-inks-colouring/) - next →: [Plastics: useful and stubborn](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chemistry/29-plastics-useful-stubborn/) - ↑ back to [Chemistry](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chemistry/)