Colors are either reflected or absorbed, usually one color is reflected and the rest are absorbed but with a mirror or any type of reflection it shows multiple colors, why?
In: Biology
Mirrors reflect nearly all light. They are ‘white’. If a mirror were less smooth, it would appear white. White objects do not *reflect* light – they scatter it.
The same is true of a white wall. Shine a red light at it, and it’s red. Shine a green light at it, and it’s green. White is many different colours, it’s whatever colour you throw at it, and if you throw all the colours at it’s white. A mirror is white. Although, we typically call this shinny white (or light grey) silver. Because, well, silver (and most metals) are that colour.
Now, clearly there’s a difference between a white wall and a mirror. And that’s not colour, but rather the type of reflection. If the surface is smooth, all light reflects at the exact same angle it came in at. This means you can see an image. If you look at one part of the mirror, you can only see light from whatever direction that perfect reflection is from. If the surface is bumpy (and I mean all the way down to a microscopic scale) the light will randomly bounce off in all directions. This means any hint of an image is scrambled. A white wall is doing the same thing as a mirror, but rather than seeing the light coming in from a fixed angle (an image) you see the light from the entire room as it’s all randomly reflected.
So this is the difference between white and silver. White is totally scrambled and scattered, it’s *diffuse reflection*. Silver/mirror like is the the same colour, but it’s *specular reflection*. If you don’t polish silver (or another metal like it), they look white or grey. The colour didn’t change, just how rough their surface is. You can also get a mix of the two. Look at a white car, it’s diffuse white but you also see a dim reflection with the correct colours.
And it doesn’t have to be white either, you can get a specular / mirror surface of any colour. Again, see cars. This is a mix again, but you can get a blue or black coloured surface with a specular mirror like reflection too. A blue car looks blue, but you can also see an all blue image reflection. Most mirrors are made of silver or aluminum because they are white, but if you made a copper or gold mirror you’d get a fully specular reflection red/orange mirror.
Because it reflects the color?
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