If black is the absence of all colors how is it made?

Question

If black is the absence of all colors, how is it made? If black has NO COLOR how can it be possible for the color to be made? Actually i guess it wouldn't even be a color. But how do marker and crayon companies make it?

Answer 1

What you see usually comes from the light that bounces off the thing you are looking at, white light is made up of light of all colors, so what you see is only in the colors of light that are not absorbed by the thing you are observing.

Colors of light are related to their frequency and wavelength and most matter either absorbs or reflects certain specific colors. Those that do neither and allow the light to pass through them are transparent. Those that reflect all colors to your eye are white and those that absorb everything but red are seen as red, those that absorb all colors but green are seen as green, and so on... so if an object absorbs all colors and reflects no color to your eye then you see the absence of light as black.

Answer 2

It actually depends on the medium you're using. Some are "additive," formed by adding colors together, some are "subtractive," formed by taking some colors away, and some colors depend on how they either absorb or reflect certain colors of the visible light spectrum.

In Ninth Grade Art Class, lo these many years ago, we made "near black" by mixing a whole bunch of different colors until we got something that approached black. In that same class, we learned that "black" and "white" weren't "colors," but instead were called "values."

Now, in computer-dom, you have another paradigm. You have RGB - Red, Green, Blue - which is how color is displayed on your monitor, as a mix of red, green and blue in small squares called "pixels." White is maximum of red, green and blue, or expressed in common numerical terms, 255, 255, 255. Black, on the other hand, is the absence of red, green, and blue, or 0, 0 ,0. You can prove this by shining red-, green- and blue-filtered flashlights on a single point, and you will see a white circle where all three colored beams intersect.

But, also in computers and especially in printed media, you have Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black - called CMYK - which form different colors by adding the various hues together. I'm least familiar with how this works, but I seem to remember that it works very differently than RGB colors. You can Google for more definitive answers in this area.

Answer 3

From what I remember in school... black is the absence of light. That concept doesn't apply to pigmants or colors in material like ink or dye. Black crayons for example, just come from dyes no different than blue or green. Hope this helps and I don't sound like an idiot :-)

Answer 4

Black is the absence of color, while white light is the presence of all colors, primary if my memory serves me.
Want to know how crayons are made?
http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blcrayon.htm

Want to really know about the primary colors and how they are used to make all the colors in the world, check out the link below.
http://home.att.net/~B-P.TRUSCIO/COLOR.htm

I started out in Ask.com - Any art student worth their salt will talk you to death about color theory. Good Luck!

Answer 5

colors are part of the spectra, which are the frequencies that are emitted from different atoms at different wavelengths. anytime we see a color, it really isnt that color, its really the opposite of that color on the color wheel. different materials absorb and emit light at different levels, like white is all colors, black is no color, its just not absorbing any light. this might sound confusing, sry i tried to explain some of what i remember from chem class.

Answer 6

gray is made whilst somewhat black have been given which comprise a shade some do in comparison to mixing with then it had a chemical reaction yet gray replaced into considered as boring so a million/2 white/a million/2 black replaced into made...yet no longer gray....this replaced into sent to paint pots and lead Ect,,,technology

Answer 7

ALL the primary colors mixed together make black.

Answer 8

white is the absence of color, black is the mx of all colors

Answer 9

black is the absorptiion of all colors, white reflects all

Answer 10

They take all the colors and jumble them all together.
Black is a 'shade' - a classic one I might add.