Why is oxygenated hemoglobin bright red

Plant leaves are green because the chlorophyll in the leaves contains magnesium at the center of the ring. Meanwhile, in cold-blooded animals, blood appears blue because copper atoms sit at the center of the ring and bind to oxygen. To return to human blood, the iron in hemoglobin binds oxygen in the lungs as we inhale air. Now, our blood looks bright red as it is being pumped away from the lungs to the tissues in our body.

Luckily, oxygen binding is reversible, which means that oxygen taken up in the lungs is released in the tissues as the blood circulates around the body. When the oxygen is released, it is replaced by carbon dioxide, which is then taken back to our lungs and expelled from our bodies as we breathe. When carbon dioxide binds to hemoglobin, the color changes from bright red to dark red with a hint of purple. But why do our veins look blue?

The blue color that we see with our eyes is a combination of the blood, the vessel, the skin, and the process that allows us to see color. What are red blood cell disorders? Read on to learn more about these conditions, including the different types and examples of RBC disorders.

White blood cells fight infection. If someone has too many white blood cells, they may have an underlying condition, such as an infection or cancer…. For some types of blood tests, a person may need to fast beforehand. In this article, learn about fasting for blood tests. The blood vessels you see at the surface of your skin are veins. Skin color varies a lot, so the veins can look different in different people, but blood is exactly the same color in everyone.

It still doesn't look red in veins. When you see lemon-lime flavored soft drinks in plastic bottles they usually look green, because the bottles are green. But when you pour them out, they're often clear or yellow.

So when we look at our veins, the color we see depends on the color of our skin and the walls of the veins. Assuming you are talking about human blood, blood is always red. Some animals have different color blood — blue and green! Our blood gets its color from hemoglobin, which is an important part of your blood. Hemoglobin helps the blood carry oxygen and carbon dioxide which is important for your ability to function. Hemoglobin has iron, which gives it the red color. When the blood is oxygenated it is bright red.

When it has depleted its oxygen, blood is dark red. Blood appears blue-ish in your veins because the skin blocks light. What you see is the blue color being reflected back to your eye. Hi Bill. I'm sure you have heard that blood is blue in our veins before it hits oxygen but that it not true. Blood contains a protein, Hemoglobin, and hemoglobin binds Iron. The deoxygenated conformation of hemoglobin must absorb light in the orange range, and reflect blue light, to account for the bluish appearance of deoxygenated blood.

We could use a spectrophotometer to examine a dilute solution of blood and determine the wavelength of light absorbed by each conformation. For an approximate prediction of the wavelength of light absorbed and for the colors of light absorbed for a given complementary color, a table such as Table 1 in the introduction to the Experiment "Relations Between Electronic Transition Energy and Color" could be used.

Related Practice Problems. Spectroscopy and the Color of Blood The changes that occur in blood upon oxygenation and deoxygenation are visible not only at the microscopic level, as detailed above, but also at the macroscopic level.