Understanding Light and Colour
Light travels in waves. The eye is able to perceive colour because each colour has a wave of different lengths. Reds have the longest wavelengths and blues the shortest. When light is passed through a glass prism its waves split according to their length and can be ‘seen’ as separate colours – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet – always in that order, the order of the rainbow. The human eye is able to perceive certain light wavelengths which enable us to see these colours.
Light is absorbed or reflected by surfaces. If most of the light is reflected, we ‘see’ white; if most is absorbed, we ‘see’ black. The colour we perceive depends on how much light is reflected and how much is absorbed by the ...
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