Colors we see
The cheese in your sandwich is orange. The tomato is bright red. The
lettuce is green. The light brown bread has a dark brown crust. You
would be surprised if your sandwich had red cheese, a brown tomato,
Light shining through a prism makes a rainbow.
orange lettuce, and light green bread with a dark green crust,. In fact,
you might not feel very hungry!
We see colors in things because of the way things reflect light. White
light is a mixture of all colors. You can see these colors if you shine
bright sunlight through a special glass called a prism.
When white light goes through a prism, it spreads and separates into a
rainbowlike band of colors. If you look carefully, you should be able to
see six bands of color, each one blending into the next. The colors are
violet, blue, green, yellow, orange, and, finally, red.
When white light shines on something, some of the colors are absorbed,
or soaked up. Other colors are reflected. The tomato in your sandwich
looks red because it absorbs other colors and reflects red. Lettuce
absorbs other colors and reflects green. The cheese reflects orange
light. And the bread reflects a mixture of colors that your eyes see as
brown.
The paper on this page looks white because it reflects all of the colors
in white light. Nearly all the light bounces off the paper and reaches
your eyes. The words look black because they reflect almost no light at
all. Black things absorb nearly all the light that reaches them. So you
don’t see any color in something that is black.
