ELIF: Why do dark colors attract more heat?
In: Physics
It’s not about attracting. It’s about absorption.
Imagine each colour of the rainbow corresponds to a number on a scale from like 400 (violet) to red (780), I know that’s not intuitive, so I recommend you click this accompanying link so you can see the wavelength of colours/absorbency thing, that I learned about in way more detail when I took chemistry.
[colours ](https://images.app.goo.gl/DXActuF6XeFJvA488)
I’m really bad at internetting and I’m super overtired, it let’s move on.
When white light passes through any substance, the corresponding wavelength is absorbed. I’m trying to think of a better way to explain that. Think of it like this. When you shine a white light at an object that is on the red spectrum, it will absorb that colour, and reflect the complimentary colour to that (green). So if a substance absorbs at a certain wavelength, THAT is the colour, but we see what colour is complimentary to that, aka green.
What makes this even cooler is to know that the light which is below or above that range of visible wavelengths, aka above or below the rainbow, are UV rays and infrared rays.
If I tried to explain beyond this, I would be getting into stuff that I am too tired to explain simply, and wouldn’t be super contributory toward your understanding of how colours work.
Sorry? It’s 5am, I looked back at your question and saw that it was about heat and not about colours as wavelengths of light.
So in essence:
Black absorbs a bunch of wavelengths. So it gets hotter.
Darker colors only absorb more heat in the sunlight. If you are wearing a black shirt inside your house, you won’t get too hot bc the lightbulbs aren’t putting off very much heat with their light.
When you are in the sun, the light that is hitting you comes with the heat that the sun radiates. Since a darker color is absorbing more light, it is also absorbing more of the suns heat.
Interesting thing to think about: everything you see appears that color because of the light it reflects. So, leaves are reflecting green light, and absorbing all the other colors of visible light.
Because of Black Body radiation. Black colors tend to consume more heat energy and reflect less of the energy striking the colored surface.
colors absorb or bounce back light, darker colors absorb more and therefore get hotter, so on a hot day at an amusement park you would be cooler wearing a white shirt versus a black shirt, granted i personally refuse to wear anything but black so i always burn 🙁
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