science help: If you face two mirrors towards each other, what is their colour? - Help.com

Colour is what humans percieve to be a property of objects owing to the wavelength of light that the eye recieves from the object.

A mirror just reflects that light at that wavelength into your eye. The only thing that has changed is that the light from the object has t travel a bit further to your eye.

Air is something. Its colourless because there’s nothing there. Its because there is nothiing there that gives off light and because it’s a gas, the density is too small to absorb any of the light. So light passes quite freely through air.

Mirrors are a highly reflective silver colour. I dont think they reflect absolutely, but I could be wrong. Still, I am sure they are considered to be silver.

Colour is reflected, so if air has no colour, there is nothing in the air to reflect, so they reflect what is passed the air

Bogdan wrote:
Mirrors are a highly reflective silver colour. I dont think they reflect absolutely, but I could be wrong. Still, I am sure they are considered to be silver.

Colour is reflected, so if air has no colour, there is nothing in the air to reflect, so they reflect what is passed the air

Silver is not a colour. Silver is the material that was used to coat glass to make mirrors when they first started using them. We say something is silver in colour because it resembles a mirror in that it reflects the light that falls onto it.

True silver mirrors have around 60-70% reflection. Mirrors made now use aluminium which relects upto 90% of the light.

I learnt it as silver, which was treated as a colour in chemistry as it was the easiest way to explain the reflective properties, but apparently it is not a colour.

Yeah sure. Just like it being in a dark room; it would reflect everything, but as there is no light to reflect it looks dark and black. Technically actually you cant even detect its there becaue no light from it comes to you eye.

Or if you shine ultraviolet or infrared light on it. You again wouldn’t even see the mirror because your eyes cant see UV or IR. But the mirror ir still reflecting this light so thats the ‘colour’ it would look if your eyes could detect IR and UV.

And silver is of course reflective (well when you polish it and its pure anyway). That’s why mirrors are reflective. They are just silver with a sheet of glass over the top. But Silver (the metal) doesn’t have its own colour, it just refelcts most of the light that falls onto it (like zinc, or beryllium, or aluminium and a load of other metals). It’s just that silver was the first to be used for mirrors so that name has stuck for things that are highle reflective, that’s all.

Darn my chemistry teacher. That was year 11 and 12. She stated it as fact. This is why I didnt listen to my teachers. Too much mis-information

Colour….grr you could have many a debate over this. take art for example. Black and white is considered “tone” not colour…but the impressionist artists used black and considered it a colour in it’s own right.

i know this isn’t really related but it made me think how people think differnt things about colour…like the printer ink is not primary red, yellow, blue, is it?

Would gold colour have the same sort of properties as silver”? I don’t know so I ask :)

Colour isn’t anything absolute. Technically; humans perceive electromagnetic radiation of varying wavelength between the range of roughly 400nm and 700nm as ‘colour’. This part of the electromagnetic spectrum is physically no more remarkble than any other part of it. It’s just that one of our senses can collect the information and the brain interprets the radiation as an image.

Our skin for example is also sensitive to electromagnetic radiation, only between the range on 1micron and 2micron of so. This range is called the infrared (longer than red light wavelength), but we interpret this not as an image but as a sensation of heat.

Black by physical definiton is something that does not emmit or refect any radiation. We cannot detect it with out eyes or our skin.

Gold, just like any other metal (and material) reflects some of the light (which then foes into our eyes), and absorbs some. The remaining light that is refelected that goes into our eyes we interpret as ‘gold colour’. Because the specific absorbtion/reflection of light is a property of a material all gold metal ‘looks gold’. Just like all silver ‘looks silver’.

So there is no colour colour? It’s all in our head, this is what we percieve to be true. So we name it, learn about it in primary school, and have to then start unlearning it when we grow up…but colour not being true, in paint, they talk about pigment being the colour…aw, confused.

What about colour blind people (who just see black and white), and colour deficient people (who can see red as green, and orange as red, and get their blues, purples and violets mixed up).

In our eyes there are two sets of light-senstive cells. These cells are called rods and cones (because of their shape);

http://www.faqs.org/health/images/uch…

The rods are monochromatic; that is they are only sensitive to light in general, so shorter wavelength light (bluer light) looks whiter than longer wavelength (less energetic red light). The output to the brain is a black and white image.

There are three sorts of cones; those that detect the three primary colours; red green and blue (light primary, not paint). These are only *roughly* sensitive to light of wavelength 600-700nm, 500-600nm and 400-500nm. (1nm in a nanometer or one millionth of a meter). Combinations of these rod cells detecting the right wavelength is interpreted by the brain in a distinct colour to another. And if two diffent cone cells detect light, then the brain ‘averages out’ the colour to a yellow/orange, or a greeny-blue etc.

But sometimes for example the green sensitive cells are interpreted as red (and vice versa) by the brain, giving colour deficiency. If these cells don’t work at all then you only can detect with the rod cells and you are said to be colour blind.

fractal.scatter wrote:
Gold, just like any other metal (and material) reflects some of the light (which then foes into our eyes), and absorbs some. The remaining light that is refelected that goes into our eyes we interpret as ‘gold colour’. Because the specific absorbtion/reflection of light is a property of a material all gold metal ‘looks gold’. Just like all silver ‘looks silver’.

Oh just thought, what about the chrome of a drum kit or brass instuments and how they are reflective, but seem to be coloured? I suppose if the surface is smooth and shiny enough, like red plastic (i have this box made ofred plastic and if I look close I can see light and shade, and reflecty) it can reflect too?

hm. A lot of artist were speculated to be colour blind…I think Monet was colour blind later on in his life but that it helped make his painting look like they were moving because of the “different” choice of colours used…well, maybe it was someone else. Oh, colour deficient it should be then :)

Anonymous wrote:
Colour….grr you could have many a debate over this. take art for example. Black and white is considered “tone” not colour…but the impressionist artists used black and considered it a colour in it’s own right.

i know this isn’t really related but it made me think how people think differnt things about colour…like the printer ink is not primary red, yellow, blue, is it?

Would gold colour have the same sort of properties as silver”? I don’t know so I ask :)

My printer has red, blue, yellow and black. (Trust me, I put them in :P)

no, not red, its like a pinke colour.