Traditional Culture Encyclopedia - Weather inquiry - Why is it cooler to wear white clothes than black clothes when the weather is hot?

Why is it cooler to wear white clothes than black clothes when the weather is hot?

The heat of the sun is transmitted to the surface of the earth by radiation. In short, light will transfer heat, and objects can absorb more sunlight. If the quantity is too large, the object is easily heated.

The composition of sunlight is not single. When we look at the sun, it is a color (white). In fact, we can tell by letting sunlight pass through a prism. In fact, sunlight is composed of colorful rays (even rays that we can't see at all), but these rays reach our eyes at the same time, making us feel that the rays of sunlight are white.

In addition, each color of light has a certain amount of energy. When the same sunlight shines on an object, the more light of different colors is absorbed. The more, the more likely it is that an object will get hot.

Knowing that sunlight is actually colorful, we will talk about the next topic: why do we think that objects are a certain color?

The answer is, because under the irradiation of white light, objects will absorb some colors of white light and reflect other colors of light, and then these reflected lights will be captured by our eyes, and we will think that this is something with color.

Like a blue cloth. We think this cloth is blue because sunlight or white light shines on this blue cloth. All other colors are absorbed by this cloth. Only blue light is reflected, and our eyes see blue light, so it is a piece of blue.

There are two special cases. The first one is black. This color is equivalent to absorbing all visible light, so you will think it is black. The second one is white. It's all the same color. Visible light is reflected, so you think this thing is white.

Do you understand now? Black objects absorb all colors of light, so they are easy to heat up, while white objects reflect all colors of light, so the heating speed is very slow.

We must make it clear that sunlight looks white, because sunlight consists of a series of spectra from infrared to ultraviolet, including red, orange, yellow, green, blue, blue and purple. The seven visible lights we can see with the naked eye are like mixed pigments, which usually make the mixed sunlight look white.