• Question: How does an object choose which colours to reflect, how does this work?

    Asked by jameskeywood123 to Mike, Pip, Tianfu, Tim, Tom on 27 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Tom Lister

      Tom Lister answered on 27 Jun 2012:

      Light is usually absorbed in the bonds between atoms or by the the atoms themselves. They seem to prefer particular colours of light to absorb and ignore the rest. Stuff that isn’t absorbed can bounce around until it comes back out of the object, and so makes up the colour.

    • Photo: Tim Stephens

      Tim Stephens answered on 27 Jun 2012:

      It depends on the materials that the object is made of. Different atoms and molecules reflect different wavelengths of light depending on their chemical structure.

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