Originally posted by Integral
Not real clear to me, but possibly. Though given chemical composition of the glass may be all that is needed.
You can answer this, do different types of glass look different?
Alright, I did have something in mind that I forgot to mention. I am particularly interested in colored glass bottles. Like a bottle that appears to be green glass in sunlight but maybe purple (Just guessing) in ultraviolet light. By looking at bottles only with ultraviolet light can science determine what color the bottle will appear to be in white light (or sunlight).
Yes, I guess I can use Google to find the scientific standards, but I'm not sure how to use Google to answer the question about determining the "natural" color of stained glass from viewing solely with one particular wavelengths of light, say ultraviolet light.
I'm actually interested in this question from a philosophical point of view. I do have some incandescent UV bulbs around here somewhere so I suppose I could check different colors of stained glass experimentally to see if different types of say green glass do appear to be different colors in the UV light.
This whole question came out of a philosophical discussion concerning whether the color of a bottle is an absolutely objective property, or a more illusive relative subjective property.
My main concern from a philosophical point of view is to figure out whether the scientific methods of optics can indeed be used to determine the "natural color" of a bottle (defined as the color as viewed in the "standard" of white sunlight) from information obtained by shining a specific frequency of light on it, in this case ultraviolet light.
That whole scenario would be hard to do a Goggle search on.
Believe it or not, this whole topic is actually a much smaller part of a larger conversation concerning the meaning of number and how it is associated with the quantitative properties of the universe. But I really don't want to get into that here. I am merely interested in the Optics question right now. Can scientists determine the natural color of stained glass in white light from having observed it using only a small part of the spectrum?
At first I was thinking that the answer would be "yes", but now I'm starting to think that the limited spectrum of light could not be used to give the answer to what the glass might appear to look like if a wider spectrum of light was used. That certainly makes scientific sense, but has deeper philosophical implications.
However, as you also mention, given the composition of the glass science
might be able to determine the color that it would appear under any given wavelength without even performing any actual experiements. That also makes perfect sense to me and would once again make me simle!
This is because within the scope of our discussion I am permitted to use any known science which includes the composition of the glass. My only limitation is that I am only permitted to shine untraviolet light onto the bottle (or no light at all if I don't need that data). My sole job is to determine what color the bottle will appear in white light using pure science and no white light.
My only knowledge is the composition of the bottle, what it appears to look like in UV light, and all of known science that has already been previously recorded in history (including any previously performed experiments in optics, QM, or whatever).
Armed with that information only can I be certain as a scientist to always be able to predict the color that the bottle will appear in white light?
