ELIF: Why do dark colors attract more heat?
In: Physics
It’s not about attracting. It’s about absorption.
Imagine each colour of the rainbow corresponds to a number on a scale from like 400 (violet) to red (780), I know that’s not intuitive, so I recommend you click this accompanying link so you can see the wavelength of colours/absorbency thing, that I learned about in way more detail when I took chemistry.
[colours ](https://images.app.goo.gl/DXActuF6XeFJvA488)
I’m really bad at internetting and I’m super overtired, it let’s move on.
When white light passes through any substance, the corresponding wavelength is absorbed. I’m trying to think of a better way to explain that. Think of it like this. When you shine a white light at an object that is on the red spectrum, it will absorb that colour, and reflect the complimentary colour to that (green). So if a substance absorbs at a certain wavelength, THAT is the colour, but we see what colour is complimentary to that, aka green.
What makes this even cooler is to know that the light which is below or above that range of visible wavelengths, aka above or below the rainbow, are UV rays and infrared rays.
If I tried to explain beyond this, I would be getting into stuff that I am too tired to explain simply, and wouldn’t be super contributory toward your understanding of how colours work.
Sorry? It’s 5am, I looked back at your question and saw that it was about heat and not about colours as wavelengths of light.
So in essence:
Black absorbs a bunch of wavelengths. So it gets hotter.
Latest Answers