Bacround Research - Heat Absorption

Backround Research

Color affects how heating is created in many ways. First off, color affects heating because it reflects or absorbs a certain amount of light. Lighter colors (white, yellow, light green) reflect more and darker colors (indigo, black, purple) absorb more. This is because an object absorbs all the colors coming towards it in a light spectrum and the color that it reflects; the object appears of that color. Objects appear in different colors because the color depends on the wave lengths of colors reflected from the object.

The Electromagnetic Spectrum is the basic spectrum of all electric, magnetic, and visible radiation, from gamma rays that have a wave length 0.001 angstrom to waves having a wavelength of more than one million km. An angstrom (Å) is a unit of measurement equal to one ten millionth of a millimeter. Radiation is the act or condition of diverging in all directions from a center. The emissivity of a material is the relative ability of its surface to emit energy by radiation. To reflect is to be turned or cast back, as light. To absorb is to take in, so colors can take in the light and transfer it to heat energy. Transfer is to change from one thing to another.

The reason the grass is green is that all the color wavelengths hit the grass and all of them are absorbed except for one, which is the green wavelength, which is reflected. It is the same with any other color, blue, orange, any color; the reason it appears that color is that all colors are absorbed but the color that it is. If something were to be white then all of the colors would be reflected, but with black, all of the colors are absorbed, so it can transfer the most heat energy. That is how absorption comes into play. The heat from the light comes in, warming it, and if black is getting more colors absorbed, then it will absorb more heat because it is transferring more light into heat energy. Several people have experimented with color and heat absorption to determine how much heat is transferred by difference of color. These people included Benjamin Franklin in 1760, Count Rumford in 1792, William Hershel in 1800, and James Starke in 1833. All of these men concluded that colors affect heat absorption.

Each different color has their own properties including red having a wavelength that is 750-610 nm (nanometers), and violet having a wavelength of 425-400 nm. Each color also has its own distinct properties of hue, value, and saturation. Color also influences heat because of how it absorbs heat. As darker colors absorb all color wavelengths, they absorb more light to transfer into heat energy. So color influences heat from lights because the darker it is, it usually absorbs more colors to heat. Additionally, emissivity can influence how an object absorbs heat.

In conclusion, dark colors will heat up more than light colors. Dark colors heat up faster than lighter colors because darker colors absorb most color wavelengths while white reflects