When a certain wavelength is removed by an object through absorption, the object appears the colour contrary to that absorbed. In that case, what happens to the other wavelengths that are incident on that object, given that they too are within the visible spectrum?
In: Physics
Visible light is a spectrum of wavelengths, meaning that although we all like the rhyme “Richard of York gave battle in vain” to remember red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple, that doesn’t really tell the whole story. There aren’t just seven discrete colours, there’s a whole spectrum of colours that fade into one another. It’s really more like red, reddish-orange, orangey-red, Orange, orangey-yellow…etc and even that’s a massive massive oversimplification!
So it’s also an oversimplification to say that green objects absorb all the light except green light, because it probably absorbs most of the red ends of the spectrum, but does reflect some of the yellow and a bit of the blue. Depending on how much yellow&blue are reflected, this will lead to different shades of green!
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