SUNLIGHT PROCESS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 254, 27 October 1938, Page 8

SUNLIGHT PROCESS

CONVERSION INTO FOOD A new method of searching to discover how sunlight is captured and converted into food and fuel for man has been found, an Ohio chemist said recently. Speaking before the closing session of the American Chemical Society meeting at Milwaukee, Dr. Paui Rothemund, of Antioch College, described the process of photosynthesis, in which chlorophyll, the green colouring matter in plants, absorbs sunlight, as one of the principal mysteries of the universe. A new approach to unlocking its secrets has been found, however, m tne discovery that the process will work in reverse and that chlorophyll will give off light as well as absoro it. The two forms of chlorophyll, which are chemically similar to the red pigment of blood cells, “when heated in certain organic solvents undergo a chemical change and this change is accompanied by the emission of a beautiful red glow of the entire solution,” Dr. Rothemund declared. This phenomenal apparently only added another complication io the chlorophyll studies. Actually, however, it gave science a new clue to the problem. It is possible to calculate from the weight of plant material produced by sunlight the amount of energy wnich it absorbed. In the same way, by measuring the amount of light emitted by the chlorophyll as it decomposes under chemical treatment, the amount of energy released can be estimated.

Some chemists who heard the report declared this laboratory procedure might some day result in synthetic manufacture of chlorophyll and possibly enable man to speed up his production of food and fue’