Is Black a Colour? Examining the Definition and Perception of Black as a Colour

[Ironman Joe]

Not trying to be snotty, just looking for a laugh. No there is no such thing as black light, unless your a hippy from the 60s. Space is not black, because any light continues until it strikes something reflective, it's transparent. Black holes are truly black, bacause light that strikes them just turns into matter on the surface. Shine a light on a black object, and you will see it. Shine a light on a black hole, which is still an object, you still won't see it. Black as a pigment is a color, in the realm of illumination, it does not exist.

 

[lotrgreengrapes7926]

This reminds me of the debate of Pluto's...planethood.
The only reasons you would see a black object are
1) it's not truly black and reflects some light,
2) you "see" it because it is different from its surroundings.
If you were in a sealed room, painted totally black, and you shined a flash light against a wall, you would still see nothing (except for maybe reflection of dust in the air).

 

[DaveC426913]

This reminds me of the debate of Pluto's...planethood.
The only reasons you would see a black object are
1) it's not truly black and reflects some light,
2) you "see" it because it is different from its surroundings.
If you were in a sealed room, painted totally black, and you shined a flash light against a wall, you would still see nothing (except for maybe reflection of dust in the air).

I find it interesting that I could paint that room six thousand different kinds of red and we'd still call it red. But that is not true of painting it black. If you pick up any light from it at all, you'll tell me what colour has been added to the black.

The colour "red" (or "green" or whatever) can have a nigh-infinite variety to them, yet this "black" has only a single flavour.

If black is merely a colour like every other colour, why does it follow rules so stringent as to be impossible to execute in real life?

That seems suspicious to me in terms of whether we can call it a colour, even in pigments. It seems to be more of an ideal concept.

 

[leemuhammad]

Black is the opposite of color, you must have light to have color. All colors come from Black.

 

[disregardthat]

All colors come from black?

The way we understand black is the absence of it. When we read the words here at the forum, we don't actually see them, we anly see the absence of light, which form letters in our head. I have read many stupid things here, but I must say I agree most with zoobyshoe.

I have not read the whole topic, but the one who said oxygen is black, has got it all wrong. We see an object as black if it absorbs the light with wavelengths we can see, and does not emit any light in the frequenzies we can see. Oxygen does not ABSORB any of the light in the frequenzies, (if it does it must be minimal, because we can't see the absence of any color), the light that we can see, goes through them. It doesn't get the right amount of energy to "knock" the electrons to a higher level to emit electromagnetic radiation. That's why we see them as transparent.

I may have expalined myself a bit flawfully, but the reason of that is that I can't find words for everything i mean.

 

[debeng]

color is just our perception, and i am just beginning to think it isn't any physical thing at all. what if only we humans (or even only mammals) got cones in our eyes so that we coould define the different wavelenght as clours. what if we never had had them and we would only be limited to the rods. wat if we would otherwise had perceived them to be different or just opposite. colors were coined as per our perception, not according to its phyiscal properties. it is not yet all physical. we can perceive color, if we percieve abasence of it, that is BLACK. black is no colour " according to phyics" but it is as per our perception...

 

[Ironman Joe]

If a tree falls in the forest, and there is no one there, does it make a noise? No it does not. It makes a sound. Some one has to be there to interpret that sound, and classify it as a "noise". The moon robs the color from our sight, blue is gray, and yellow white...If we did a spectral analysis of the blue, would it still be blue, would the yellow still be yellow? OH, I'm SO confused.

 

[ganon00]

black is a color its as simple as that, little jimmy when he mixes all his colors together what does he get... oooh he gets black. Note black is not the absence of color.

 

[disregardthat]

EDIT: "The way we understand black is the absence of LIGHT***"

 

[thiotimoline]

EDIT: "The way we understand black is the absence of LIGHT***"

If blue light comes to our eyes, we see it as blue colour. But since black means absence of light, no light reaches us, then can we still say black is a colour? In addition, what's the wavelength of black? Within the visible light spectrum of 400nm and 700nm?

 

[Ironman Joe]

Ok, black is not a color to us. Who can say, that out there in the vast expanse of the universe, there is not a species that can not see red. They can see black quite well, but red excapes them. What color is red...in the moon light?
I declare this horse dead, may it rest in peace.

 

[DaveC426913]

I declare this horse dead, may it rest in peace.

The irony here is that the thread had been dead and buried for a week, and it was Joe that resurrected it on the 23rd.

 

[Ironman Joe]

Fun wasn't it?

 

[vizblue]

Black is a pigment colour...we use it every day, example marking with pencil etc. Paint companies manufacture it, and is one of their biggest selling product,
black paint is required by the industries most of the time..

 

[Danger]

Black is a pigment colour

A contradiction in terms. By definitions that I'm familiar with from graphic design, colour and pigment are not the same thing. A pigment is a substance that gives the viewer the impression of seeing a particular colour.

 

[D H]

Is black a color? Technically, no. But suppose your SO asked you "I don't know if my black dress looks good with this top. Should I pick some other color?" I hope you would be righteously slapped if you responded "What do you mean? black isn't a color."

Is black a pigment? This is much easier to answer.

The US Patent Office seems to think black is a pigment color. There have been http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-...nt&FIELD1=ABTX&co1=AND&TERM2=&FIELD2=&d=PTXT" issued since 1976 with black pigment in the abstract.

The "Colour Index International", jointly maintained by the Society of Dyers and Colourists and the American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists seems to think it black is a pigment color. The "gold standard" ... umm "black standard" ... is carbon black, aka "CI Pigment Black 7". http://www.jamesmbrown.co.uk/heubach/colour%20index.htm" .

 

[disregardthat]

It is not very hard to understand that black is just absence of visible light. Therefore, not light...

In pigment colours, we say that black is a colour, but that does not mean that the black pigment colour emit any visible light.

I have a question, if a hypothetical gas absorbed all visible light but red, would we see it as similar as a gas that absorbed all visible light, and emitted red? (assuming the light source lightning up the gas also hit our eyes) The absorbed light is transformed to heat for this gas.