Why does the colour red (on everything) loses its “colour structural integrity) much sooner than other darker colours like, say, green, blue and black?
In: Chemistry
The color you see is the result of pigments absorbing and reflecting certain wavelengths. Red things are red because they are reflecting (not absorbing) long-wavelength light and absorbing light with shorter wavelengths.
Wavelength is inversely proportional to energy. The more energy the light has, the shorter its wavelength will be (and the higher its frequency will be). Very short wavelengths beyond the visible blue and violet part of the spectrum (the *ultra*violet) have enough energy to energize electrons so much that they fly away from their atomic nuclei. This is called *ionizing radiation*.
Red things are red because they are absorbing all that low-wavelength, high-energy light at the other end of the visible part of the spectrum. Blue, on the other hand, is reflecting all that high-energy light and absorbing the lower-energy red light. As a result, red pigments are absorbing more ionizing radiation than any other pigment, while blue is absorbing the least amount.
Black is, of course, absorbing *all* visible wavelengths, so it will also degrade quickly. That said, it’s harder for you to notice black fading from “not very much light being reflected at all” to “a little bit more light than before”. It’ll still be black, just less black.
First, we need to understand how we see color ([source](https://www.pantone.com/articles/color-fundamentals/how-do-we-see-color))
>AN INTRODUCTION TO COLOR AND THE HUMAN EYE.
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>The human eye and brain together translate light into color. Light receptors within the eye transmit messages to the brain, which produces the familiar sensations of color.
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>Newton observed that color is not inherent in objects. Rather, the surface of an object reflects some colors and absorbs all the others. We perceive only the reflected colors.
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>Thus, red is not “in” an apple. ***The surface of the apple is reflecting the wavelengths we see as red and absorbing all the rest.*** An object appears white when it reflects all wavelengths and black when it absorbs them all.
The sun’s rays are polychromatic, consisting of all visible and non-visible color. Below the visible spectrum we have UV (ultraviolet) light with wavelengths too short to see and above the visible spectrum we have IR (infrared) light with wavelengths too long to see.
Red is the color with the longest wavelength of light that we can see with our eyes, which means that red colored items are absorbing all of the shorter wavelengths. Shorter wavelengths have more energy and since those wavelengths are absorbed by red objects the higher energy degrades them faster.
Red is quite far into the spectrum, if you mean the prism effect or[chromatic abberation](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/Chromatic_aberration_lens_diagram.svg), it’s because the wavelengths don’t quite match up after going through the shaped glass, as white light contains all colors of the spectrum.
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