I have already asked this question but I did not get satisfying answers. I want to know why the colour of darkness, which is a situation where there is no light, is always black. So, according to this, when there is no light falling on an object, the object appears dark in colour. But how come we can see black things, like your black hair on your head or your black bag. As far as I know light is falling on these objects as I see them, but I can see them black. So why do we see black when there is darkness and we do not see darkness as brown or white or any other colour except black. Can anyone tell me please??
2006-09-05 09:08:10 · 9 answers · asked by Y L 2 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Physics
Things with no light falling on them only appear black. They are only an extremely dark shade of the lighter color, I think...
2006-09-05 09:13:57 · answer #1 · answered by less than three 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Answer 1: Any thing beyond the visible light range from 700-420nm, are invisible to human eyes and will remain pitch black. Eg, if the Sun doesn't provide sources of visible light (if it only eject gamma ray and x-ray, the Earth will remain invisible (black) just like everything else in the space.
Answer 2: White light (or any other unfiltered lights) is a source of energy, and of all other colors of lights. Black is not considered as a light (or the complete opposite) energy, it absorb energy instead. Therefore, when there is not visible energy under human eyes, we can't see anything due to reflections and refractions. Therefore, we see the color black, because there is no heat or any other kind of visible energy in presence (in the darkness).
Answer 3: Something looks black, but really isn't. Eg, A crow or a raven has very very deep blue feathers...not completely black. A lot of Asian hair looks black, but in fact they are deep brown color. More over, how dark can a person become? Can a person be completely black? Maybe not...
Well, these answers are probably not satisfactory, but I hope they help.
Light and darkness has always been an interesting subject in physics....
2006-09-05 09:35:06 · answer #2 · answered by tienyutai 3 · 0⤊ 1⤋
First of all, there is no such thing as color out there in the world. It is only the humans who PERCEIVE color.
Colors as we experience in day to day life has two major components that make them different from each other.
One is chrominance or hue. This depends on the FREQUENCY of the light wave (yes they are waves just like microwaves or radio waves, just that the human eyes and brain can detect and interpret a certain part of the frequency band. Its like a radio that can only tune from 85.1 to 85.9 while there are so many more channels out there) Change in frequency dictates what hue a color has, such as red, green, blue etc.
The other aspect of what we see as color is INTENSITY. That is how dark or light a color is. That makes the difference between dark blue and light blue and red and pink for example.
There is also a third component that dictates how colorful or dull a color is - that is saturation but that is not important to this argument about darkness.
When it is completely dark, there is nothing to see because either:
a) There are no light waves bouncing off what ever we are looking at or
b)There is nothing to bounce off any light (like if we stare into space) or
c) There could be no light source to produce light waves for those objects to bounce off in the first place.
Black is technically not really a color. It is just the lack of any significant amounts of light reaching the object (like in a shadow) or the object itself not reflecting the light that it does get.
So, when ever there is not enough light entering or eye from a particular object focused on to the back of our eye or the whole eye is not getting any light at all, our BRAIN tells us that part is black
See the commonalities of all black things now?
2006-09-05 09:40:23 · answer #3 · answered by kevinrtx 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
All that darkness represents is the absence of light, therefore there is nothing to interact with the photo-receptors in your retina and provide your brain with a color scheme. Your brain interprets this as darkness or "black". The relationship between darkness and something that is black, is the same thing. They both represent lack of light getting to your retina. Black objects (like a black cat or keyboard or shirt or whatever) absorb the vast majority of light they encounter, meaning no or little visible light is reflected. Therefore no light reflected from the black object gets to your retina, and you perceive it as being "black". Remember, vision only works in the presence of light. Everything appears black when there is no light, because your eyes need light to function.
2006-09-05 09:22:55 · answer #4 · answered by loggrad98 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Could it be that you only "see" black hair because of the contrast between it and its surroundings? In other words, you do not actually see a truly black object (you see nothing, because a black object absorbs all of the light that falls upon it rather than reflect it). You only notice the black bag because there is a bag shaped "hole" in your vision where you see nothing.
2006-09-05 09:15:39 · answer #5 · answered by Randy G 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
There is a diffirence between darkness (absence of light) and pigmentation, something that is colored 'black' is made up of a chemical, it is this chemical that responds to the light makeing a object appear black.
2006-09-05 10:01:24 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
the dark colored object absorbs the light falling on it.
2006-09-05 09:25:06 · answer #7 · answered by z 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
i think all colors are the colors of darkness.. i mean you can only see colors only when there is light without light all colors are dark
2006-09-05 09:15:03 · answer #8 · answered by brazilianbeauty 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Sound of silence
2006-09-05 10:13:03 · answer #9 · answered by MyStIcTrE3 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋