In chem class, they taught you that if a photon with the correct wavelength hits an electrons, the electron can absorb its energy and move to the next energy level. But then it’d re-emit this photon when moving back down. Is this colour? Is this what we termed ‘reflection’ of light in elementary school?
How do we explain black objects then since they’d theoretically absorb all light. That’d mean that all photons are absobred to excite electrons but none are emitted back – the electrons would then eject from the atom???
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Yes, that is how reflection works.
And black objects typically will give off the energy they absorb from light, but they don’t give it off in the visible spectrum. Very often you can feel the heat coming off of them, which means they are giving it off in the infrared. Remember that the entire electromagnetic spectrum is very big compared to the small portion of it that we can actually see with our eyes. And all of it is the same thing, even though we don’t typically call call photons we cannot see light.
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