eli5: why do darker colours absorb more heat?
In: 1
Lighter colors are lighter because they reflect more light – that’s quite literally what color of an object is. Darker objects reflect less light, which means they absorb more light, and since light (sunlight) carries energy, now that energy is in the darker object, heating it.
If something is dark it’s because it is absorbing light and not reflecting it. It’s the opposite of something that is bright and reflecting light back at you. Absorbing light heats it up since light has energy.
* Darker colors absorb more *light* which then gets converted to *heat*.
* Why do they absorb more light?
* First let’s ask why anything absorbs light.
* The answer is because the frequency of the light wave matches the natural frequency of the electrons that makeup the object.- So the electrons take some of the energy of the lightwave and use it to start shakin’
* The reason some objects do this more than others (and hence are darker) is because they have a wider variety of stuff so that more frequencies of light will get absorbed.
* This is why if you slowly add more and more different colors of paint together you end up with a darker and darker color until ultimately you get ‘black’.
Light is made of energy, when it gets absorbed by an object, the object has to take in that energy so it can be conserved. That energy is often turned into heat, but can be reemited as light of a lower wavelength (see fluorescence) a lighter colored object reflects that light, rather than absorbing it, so that heating up doesn’t happen as fast.
Latest Answers