Colors

The average human eye can differentiate 10,000,000 different colors. I don’t personally care for that, 30,000 shades of white, or 50 shades of gray is too damn many. I’m a simple man, and will only write about colors that can be expressed in one word, like blue.

            For our purposes, light is a wave (that’s up for debate, but for the purpose of explaining this easily, it’s a wave). The visible light spectrum ranges from 390 (red) to 750 (violet) nanometers, wavelengths outside this range include radio waves and X-rays. An object is whatever color it doesn’t absorb. For example, blue paint is blue because when illuminated with typical white light it absorbs every wavelength except blue, which is diffused into our eyes. However that’s not the case for every color in the world. The sky, for example, surely you’re all familiar with it. The sky is “blue” because light from the sun encounters air molecules. Because of the size of these molecules, light shorter wavelengths (like blue light) crash into the particles and scatter, which is why we see blue when we look at the sky away from the sun. Without the air molecules, that space (outer space) would appear black. This phenomenon is known as interference.

            Back when I studied optical physics, my teacher spent an unhealthy amount of time going over mirrors for the AP test, so I think they’re worthy to talk about. A perfect mirror (in theory) reflects all light. Since they don’t absorb any light (in theory) a mirror is technically “white”. More accurately, the mirror becomes whatever color it’s held up to. If you were to hold it up to a green wall, the mirror would be green. And if you were to stare at your gorgeous self in a mirror, it would become “you colored”. So a mirror is technically an infinitely configurable shade of white, “smart white” as astronomers call it. We only perceive them as silver because they’re made of silvery materials, like… well, silver.