Why can't we see colors in the dark? Detailed answer

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Why can't we see colors in the dark? Detailed answer

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Why can't we see colors in the dark?

Sunlight, like the light from any hot body, is called white light. But, as Newton first showed, white light is actually a combination of light of different colors. If a beam of light is passed through a glass prism, you can see all the colors of the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. Each color smoothly transitions into the next. This distribution of colors is called the light spectrum. These colors are also present in sunlight, but they can be seen in the decomposition of light passed through a prism.

Each color is refracted a little differently: red is the least, purple is the most. This decomposition is called dispersion. Without dispersion, the combination of these colors appears white in the eye. Color is determined by the wavelength of light (as the distance from the crest of one wave to the crest of another on water). The shortest visible light wave is violet and the longest is red.

Most of the colors that we see in the world around us do not consist of one wave, but of a combination of waves of different lengths. When white light hits an object, some of the light waves are reflected and some are absorbed by the material from which it is made. For example, red fabric absorbs almost all light waves, except for certain wavelengths in the red part of the spectrum. Since this is the only wave reflected by the material, your eye perceives matter as red.

So color is the quality of light. It does not exist apart from the light. All the colors we see are reflected rays of light that enter our eyes. We see all objects due to the fact that light is reflected from them, and the colors that we distinguish exist in a reflected form, but are not inherent in the object itself.

Author: Likum A.

Random interesting fact from the Great Encyclopedia:

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