The Changing Scenery

Abstract

Light that falls on a material surface, incident light so-called, can pass through, or be absorbed or reflected; and normally, when a body opaque to visible light is irradiated with white light, then the colors it absorbs and those it reflects are complementary: complementary colors put together yield the color white. It seems that there is no option other than transparency, absorption and reflection, but there are. First of all we should notice that our concepts are vague, as things are more graded than thus far presented. Transparency is not quite a quality which is either present or absent; all bodies may be viewed as partially transparent and partially reflective of this or that wavelength of light at this or that temperature. There are other phenomena which may—but need not—be subsumed under the absorption or the reflection of light.