• Question: Would you say that black is a colour, or an absence of light? and do you believe it occurs in nature? Thanks :)

    Asked by balletshoes1998 to Adam, Catherine, Karen, Leila, Nazim on 14 Mar 2012. This question was also asked by katnisseverdeen, cerys, funkymonkey.
    • Photo: Adam Stevens

      Adam Stevens answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      Black is definitely an absence of light! You can only get something black if it reflects no light at all.

      This is really hard to get in nature – most black things are just really dark blue or brown.

      Even the blackest coatings developed by scientists reflect /some/ light.

      And even the blackness of space isn’t really totally black!

    • Photo: Catherine Rix

      Catherine Rix answered on 14 Mar 2012:

      An object appears black becuase it is absorbing all wavelengths of visible light and not reflecting any of them. It is an absence of light.

    • Photo: Nazim Bharmal

      Nazim Bharmal answered on 19 Mar 2012:

      Black does occur because it is an absence of light. The classic example is a black hole, which is as black as it gets. But because there is always /some/ light, we can’t find a true black. So you could say that black is a colour because it is what we call “very little light”.

    • Photo: Leila Battison

      Leila Battison answered on 19 Mar 2012:

      It’s an absence of light, because a black surface is absorbing all the wavelengths of light and giving out none.

      You get black things a lot in rocks, like obsidian or basalt, but there’s not much living that is really back. You’d think that photosynthesis would be best if all the light was absorbed (and therefore none reflected) so black leaves would be really effective, but we don’t really see it in the plant kingdom. Of course, lots of animals are black because it’s useful to hide in shadows!

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