What is the colour of mirror?
um..to answer this question let us first look at the concept of colour. Why do objects have colour?
What is colour?
Colour is the property of visible light.
Light is a wave – electromagnetic wave. The colour depends upon the role play of absorption, reflection and transmission of the waves by the atoms of the object.
When you see an object having red colour – it’s looking red because it’s absorbing all the colours except the red. So red finally gets into your eyes and we see the colour . Well you can verify this by looking at the objects in different coloured lights 🚥 When you will shine pure yellow light🔦 on a red object , it will look black▪️.
When it comes to colour of mirror , well 🧐
🧠The mirror looks red when you place an 🍎 in front of it ; when you are in front of it , it becomes ‘You’ coloured -so the mirror takes the colour of object in front of it 🧐
🧠The mirror has a silver coating , and well it might be the case that you see your face because of reflection from that very reflective , silvery surface 🧐
🧠 Keeping in mind the Physics we have talked about , mirror should be ‘White’ in colour , because it reflects all of the light falling on it🧐
But then why I do not see my face in white paper ?😦
Well , all these doubts will get cleared with a little bit of simple Physics.
Well the difference between white sheet of paper and mirror is the way of reflection.
White paper ⬜looks white because the surface isn’t super smooth so light gets reflected in all directions – Diffused reflection
Mirror isn’t white as paper because the light falling on it gets reflected in a particular direction – Specular reflection.
An ideal mirror should be called to have “white” colour – cuz it reflects all the light falling on it , but in a real world that’s very far from a real story.
The colour of mirror is GREEN📗
Why so 😦?
When you take a look at the reflection spectrum of common mirror- it peaks up at about 510 nm
Reflection spectrum of common mirror peaks up at GREEN
which corresponds to green colour📗Why peaks up at green ? Well that has to deal with how the light interacts with the mirror. Light falling on mirror , has energy in it and it gets absorbed by the charges present in atoms and molecules making them vibrate.The force of this vibration is dependent upon two things – the natural frequency at which the molecule wants to vibrate and the frequency at which the incident light is making it vibrate. Thus , when the frequency at which molecule wants to vibrate matches with the frequency of light , resonance takes place ; the wiggling of light is molecule is the most and thus most of that light gets scattered the more. In solids however, it happens in a particular direction due cancellation of waves in other directions.Yes , there is colour preference.You can verify this green colour by joining to a jewellery shop 🅹 I am talking about Mirror tunnel- two mirrors placed parallel to each other giving illusion of infinite images. If you will look closely towards the centre what is left after multiple reflection is a tinge of green colourSo yeah Physics is everywhere.Be curious to decode the mystery 💫refrences:Virtual tunnels and green glass :The colours of common mirrorsRaymond L. Lee, Jr.Javier Herna´ndez-Andre´sVsauce-https://youtu.be/-yrZpTHBEssThe Science Asylum-https://youtu.be/4HBuHX4-VU8
