The Beautiful Science of Light and Color

Light and color are two of the most intriguing and lovely aspects of our universe. Each sunrise, rainbow, and lighted city street is there because of them. Light enables us to see, and color is how our eye and brain translate that light. All of them combined give us the beauty we see and feel day after day from the blue sky above our heads to the green foliage on trees and the unlimited shades of human imagination in art, fashion, and design.

Light is a type of energy that moves in waves. These waves travel very quickly around 300,000 kilometers per second and can be from natural sources such as the sun or man-made sources such as light bulbs. When light hits an object, part of it is absorbed and the remaining part is reflected. The color that we perceive relies on which colors of light are reflected towards our eyes. For instance, a red apple appears red as it reflects red light and absorbs other colors.

The sun we observe is indeed composed of numerous colors blended together. When the sunlight travels through a glass prism or water droplets in the atmosphere, it breaks apart into a range of colors red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. This is the phenomenon that forms a rainbow. Each color exists with a distinct wavelength: the red has the longest and violet has the shortest.