On her mother's birthday, her father gave her a bunch of beautiful flowers, which were so delicate against the background of green leaves. In order not to let the flowers drop, my mother inserted them in a delicate vat, which looks very effective. However, the good times did not last long. Before long, the originally colorful flowers slowly changed color, yellow became pink, and pink became bright red. A bunch of good flowers has been spoiled like this. I am very sad to see it, but why have all the flowers turned red?
I carefully observed the water used for growing flowers and found that the original clean tap water was a little yellow. What was dissolved in the water? I also checked the small vat for growing flowers and found that it was slightly sour. After asking my mother, I found out that it was originally used to put vinegar. Could it be that vinegar changed the color of flowers? In order to confirm my assumption, I did a group of comparative experiments.
First, I put four pink carnations in vinegar, sugar, salt water and tap water respectively. After a while, the flowers in the vinegar water turned red obviously. Two hours later, the flowers inserted in the vinegar water have become dark red, while the color of the flowers inserted in the other three kinds of water has basically not changed. This proves that the "magician" who makes the flowers change color is vinegar.
Then, I prepared five different concentrations of vinegar water, inserted one pink carnation, and used tap water as a blank control. As a result, the higher the concentration of vinegar, the darker the color of flowers. The carnation inserted in the most concentrated vinegar has become a big red flower. It seems that the higher the concentration of vinegar, the stronger the "magic"!
But why can vinegar change the color of flowers? After consulting the teacher, the mystery was finally solved. It turns out that the petals of most flowers (excluding white flowers) contain a chemical substance called anthocyanin. When the pH of plants is different, this anthocyanin will make flowers show different colors. When it encounters acidic substances, it will turn red, which is why flowers are so red when they encounter vinegar. The teacher also said that anthocyanins would turn blue when encountering alkaline substances!
Dear students, now you know what magic ingredients are contained in flowers, making them so colorful and gorgeous!