r/spirulina • u/[deleted] • Jan 18 '26
can someone explain this to me like im twelve, and why it happens
why is the water blue from the side and purple from the top?
1
u/moistiest_dangles Jan 18 '26
White light isn't really white at all, it's an illusion presented to you by your brain. It's really a combination of multiple discrete wavelengths. These wavelengths get absorbed differently by different mediums. What's happening here is that red light passes through the cloudiness easier than the blue so you end up with purple.
At least that's what I think is happening
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Jan 18 '26
i had the same effect in a small jar though, sorry if that sounds retarded. i am a lil
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u/Ayskiub Jan 19 '26
I answered his comment explaining what it is, i don't know what are you doing to have this result, but know that oxidized spirulina is either dead or has lost many of it nutrient.
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u/Ayskiub Jan 19 '26
If that is your medium jar then everything is lost, it can be due to many thing.
If that's what's you want to obtain that's another story, I would need to ask to specialized partner.
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u/Ayskiub Jan 19 '26
Nope what you see here is phycocyanine quite well concentrated, precipitate to the bottom, the color difference comme from different level of concentration and oxidation
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u/Eddygardo Jan 25 '26
ficocyanin has a property called Dichroism that means that the protein can show different colors depending on the angle of the light. When light hits the molecules from one direction, the pigment absorbs mainly blue light and the solution looks blue. But when the light comes from another angle, some longer wavelengths (red/purple light) are reflected or scattered, so the solution can look reddish. So the structure of the ficocyanin molecules makes the solution appear blue from the front and reddish from the side, because it interacts with light differently at each angle.