How do colors work?

Question

I"m working with sound, light, and waves. I need to do a powerpoint presentation on how light affects colors and how they work. HELP!

Answer 1

To understand this you have to accept the idea that colors in painting come from pigments, and colors you see in everything else come from light reflection.

All colors originated from white light. The light is broken down and different combinations of how it's reflected gives you what you see as different colors.
colors work by reflecting light, the colors you see are the colors being reflected all other colors are absorbed by the object.
When you look at black it is absorbing all the colors and reflecting none, when you look at white it is reflecting all the colors.
(if you were painting or using crayons it would be opposite, white would be an absence of paint, and if you combined it all you'd get a darker color) I don't mean to over-explain that, but a lot of people seem to get hung up on that.
the primary colors of light are RED GREEN and BLUE, this is also, by the way, what RGB means when you look at the format of picture files.
reflected Red and green light waves will make yellow when combined. red and blue make purple. All of them together make white.

I'm not sure if this helps but feel free to e-mail me with more precise questions.

Answer 2

Reflection: At the real world level, when you shine white light on say a blue object, and observe, you are really seeing the blue light being reflected back.

The object gets hit with white light (all colors) and absorbs all of them except the blue light which is then reflected to your eye.

When we an object is a given 'color', we are really saying that object reflects that 'color's wavelength and absorbs all other wavelengths.

Emission: At the atomic level, give energy to neon gas and it gives off a certain wavelength (emission spectrum), the light has color.

Absorption: Pass white light through the same gas and it absorbs the exact same wavelength (absorption spectrum), the light again has color.

If you add the emission spectrum to the absorption spectrum for any gasified substance, you get the full spectrum with no extra bits and no gaps - the two are inverses of one another.

Answer 3

light hits an object, and the wave lenghs are absorbed except for the coolor that you see, this color wavelength is reflected back to your eyes, which is then interpretted by your brain