May's Science Minute

For a fun little experiment with light, gather a red apple, a white piece of paper, and a flashlight.  How do our eyes see color?  The first thing we need to know is that white light is made of lots of colors.  Whenever we play with a prism or see a rainbow in water droplets, we are witnessing light being broken up into its spectrum of colors.  Issac Newton experimented with prisms and discovered the colors of the rainbow - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet.  When we see colors, we are seeing the broken spectrum.  Newton believed the color we see is reflected off the object, while the others are absorbed.  To demonstrate this, place the red apple on the piece of white paper.  Shine the flashlight onto the apple.  If you move the light in the right way, you should see a red reflection on the white paper.  The red might be faint but should be there.