How come lighter colors reflect light and darker absorb light?please make this easy to understand ,im only thirteen and this is for a very important lab in school!thanks
Darker objects absorb more light. Colors are not light and dark, lightness and darkness are independent of color. Example: a candy apple red ball look lighter in bright light or darker (even black) in low light. If I have candy apple red paint and add black paint to it I get dark candy apple red. The black (probably carbon) absorbs light and gives the sense of a darker color. If I add white paint (probably titanium dioxide) the color appears lighter light candy apple red and it is the white that reflects more light. But when you ask How come it's a bit like asking why is water that is boiling so hot. Things that reflect a lot are lighter because they reflect a lot of light.
The visible colour of any object represents the various wavelengths of light that the object doesn't need, so if an object appears red for example, it is absorbing the green, blue and other wavelengths. Darker objects require more of the light spectrum, and therefore allow less of the spectral wavelengths to escape from them True black is the absence of light.
It's quite a simple concept although you ask the question the wrong way. It's only a matter of definition (or rather a chicken-and-egg problem). WE perceive colors that absorb more light to be dark, and ones that don't absorb a lot of color to be light. It's not the other way around. If black reflected all incoming light (opposite to what it does), it would be considered a light color. I hope you get the idea.
The color of an object depends on the reflection and the absorbtion of light. How? Actually, the color of an object depends on three things, the light source, the object properties, and the human observer. All three are necessary for an object to have color. As far as the object itself, it is the property of absorbing different amounts of the various wavelengths of light that impart color to the object. Whatever light is not absorbed is either reflected or transmitted and that is what we see. Darker colors absorb it, and light reflects it. Hence, darker colors are hotter because they hold in the heat.
Actually, rather than thinking of them as absorbers of heat, darker colors are better absorbers of light and thereby become better radiators of heat. Consider the following: The color of an object depends on the wavelengths of colors reflected from the object. A red apple is red because red wavelengths in white light are reflected and other wavelengths are absorbed. In fact, if a red apple were to be illuminated by light that had no red wavelengths, the apple would appear almost black. When a black object is illuminated by white light, all wavelengths are absorbed and none are reflected -- that's why the object appears black. I learned this the hard way one dark night when I tried to use my flashlight locate a Black Angus steer that had escaped our pen. All I could see when I shined the light on the steer were two glowing eyes. Getting back to the point; when light is absorbed by a black object, the energy carried by the light doesn't just disappear. Rather, it raises the energy of the object doing the absorbing. The object, in turn, releases the absorbed energy by emitting longer wavelength, lower energy infrared (heat). This transformation of light into heat is the key to understanding the process because it accounts for the law of conservation of energy. Light just doesn't disappear when it strikes a black object -- it's transformed into another kind of radiation that is either radiated from or retained within the black object. The darker the object, the better its emission of heat because it is a better absorber of light.
