Help with albedo please?

Question

Define the reflective properties of two surfaces, one of which would appear bright to your eye, but which had a low albedo, and the other of which would appear dark to your eye, but which had a high albedo, both surfaces illuminated by the same solar flux density. Can you think of any such surfaces? If so, describe them, if not, describe what the difficulty is.

Answer 1

albedo is the property of a material or surface that reflects incident radiation - a property of interest in climatology or spacecraft applications, when considering the effect on the surface is the wavelengths of light the surface reflects - so a dark object in visible light may be very reflective at infrared or ultraviolet frequencies - flowers exhibit this property, and some bird and insects actually see more into the ultraviolet spectrum - so flowers look very different to them - a yellow flower might have a more striking pattern when viewed in ultraviolet. An object in blacklight may have a bright albedo in visible light or it may appear darker - both objects appear the same in normal light, bright objects that appear in visible light under a UV light are shifting the energy from the black light down to visible frequencies. (that might be a good demo with a parallel from visible into infrared for many materials)
If the incident radiation is absorbed by the material then reemitted at a lower frequency, (absorbes blue or yellow, then reemits as infrared as an example) the surrounding atmosphere may block that frequency more efficiently, warming the region - snow is a great reflector at about the same temperature, but charcoal absorbs, then reemits as infrared which our atmosphere abosorbs...
There are materials that phase shift or reflect at selective angles - soap film is one, where you can see a refraction pattern on water surfaces with an oil film on them.