We don’t see light until it’s reflected off something and depending on what the thing is, it absorbs some wavelengths and not others and that’s how we perceive colours. But why? How come we just don’t see all light all the time (when exposed to it)?
In: Physics
You don’t see the individual colors of the sunlight because they’re bundled.
As soon as the light hits an object, a part of it is absorbed and a part of it is reflected.
If you have LED lights at home, ones where you can set them to any color you want, you can try to make plants look black by setting the LED’s to red. Basically, take a color wheel and set your lights to the opposite color you want to black out.
By emitting only red photons, you can only perceive those reflected red photons.
If you turn your lights on and set one of them to blue, another one to red and the other one to green, you’ll see that you begin to see colors similarly to sunlight.
So, sunlight comes with all wavelengths or colors of the spectrum bundled together. From red to violet. A lens or prism makes those visible because each wavelength behaves differently. That’s why you perceive sunlight as neutral white.
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