But then again, there is nothing without colors.
Now, look around you and see all the beautiful colors that are present in nature. [break]I can hear someone say, “Why nature? Colors are present everywhere. Like my mom paints, and she has all these beautiful colors at home in form of water paints, oil paints, pastels, and I too have crayons and color pencils.”
Oh, there is someone else saying, “Well, my mom works in the kitchen and I help her sometimes. I see all kinds of colors there, too. She uses daal with three different colors all the time. Yes yellow, red and black. And what do you know about all the greens that we eat, and the carrot, and the red chilies, and the yellow lemon? They are there, too. Oh, and the white rice.”
Yes, yes, I know you also get brown rice.
“Don’t forget the red tomatoes, brown potatoes, and of course violet eggplants! Hey! Also remember yellow turmeric, brown spices and white salt,” I hear someone else saying.
Well children, you all are smart. Very smart, but do you know what makes the colors in all these things? Not sure?
Well, nature makes them. These are all natural colors. Then there are some that humans make from nature.
Now you see, there are two varieties of colors – ones that nature makes, and those that people make from nature. Nature creates colors, but people use what are made by nature to make their own colors.
Complicated, right? But it’s not that difficult to understand. Just concentrate on the facts.
Colors produced by nature are the basic ingredients for other colors that are artificially made in the forms of paints, pastels, crayons, color pencils – you name it.
Still not clear?
Aha! Here we go again. Colors are produced from substances called pigments: very small particles of colors, which come from plants, animals, or stones, and minerals. If a substance is ground very, very finely and mixed with oil or wax, it makes oil paints or crayons, which are used on paper to color our drawings. Colors have always fascinated human beings.
Have you heard of art by cavemen? No? Well, cavemen took substances directly from nature and applied to their drawings. They used soot from oil lamps and mixed with water to create a permanent writing material. Later, they used fish as their source of ink.
I can see a few eyebrows up wanting to know the relationship between fish and ink.
Well, there is a kind of fish called cuttlefish that has special ink sacs, which it uses as camouflage. There is another sea creature that also uses ink as camouflage.
Do you know of that creature? No? Well, it’s the octopus. Ah! Now I see a few of you are thinking, “Why didn’t I think of that?”
Anyway, now that you know the relationship, you can see that throughout history, humans have used everything from earth, from soot to plants, even fish and mummies (in Egypt) to create colors! Fascinating, isn’t it?
Now think of something that has all the colors. I will give you a hint. It comes out sometimes after the rains.
Yes it is rainbow!
In Sanskrit, a rainbow is called “Indra Dhanush” (Lord Indra’s bow), and in Nepali, it’s called “Indreni.” It has all the colors in it – you just name it. Can’t do it? Then remember VIBGYOR. It stands for the colors of the spectrum: Violet, Indigo, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, and Red.
Wait, don’t rush, I’ll tell you where black and white are! But before we get into that, I´ll just go ahead and explain that all colors come from the primary colors.
The fundamental rule is that there are three colors that cannot be made by mixing other colors together, and these are called primary colors. These are: Red, Blue and Yellow.
Surprised? I know you thought there were so many more colors than those, right?
Before we go further, you will also have to understand that the colors we see are simply a degree of how much of this color present in light is reflected back to our eyes. For example, black absorbs all the colors, and hence it is black; and white reflects all the colors back to our eyes, hence it is white.
Now, let us go back to your question regarding Black and White. First, we need to figure out the question, "Are black and white colors at all?"
The answer to this question is one of the most debated issues regarding colors. Ask a scientist, and he will give you the physics reply, “Black is not a color, white is a color.” Then again, ask an artist or a child with crayons and you´ll get a different answer, “Black is a color, white is not a color.”
Maybe! Maybe not!!
Still the question remains, “Is black a color?” A very simple answer to that is, no, black is not a color because a black object absorbs all the colors of the visible spectrum and reflects none of them to the eyes. Hence you see it as black.
Now some of you are asking, “What about white? Is white a color?” To answer this question, yes, white is very much a color. White reflects all the colors of the visible light spectrum back to the eyes, hence it is white.
Amazing, isn’t it? And yes, it is complicated, too. But don’t panic, though, as you will learn a lot about colors when you study light in your science class. In the meantime, you can do the following for fun.
You can mix equal proportions yellow, red and blue to get black!
Did you know that? Now you want to know more about white. Will you believe me if I said all the colors of the spectrum together make white? I don’t think so.
When light passes through a prism, it breaks down into all the colors of a spectrum. You don’t have to take my word for it. Just ask your science teacher about the prism experiment for light, and the teacher will do the experiment for you.
Have fun, and don’t forget to ask your teacher to do the experiment for your class. Let me know how it goes. I will be waiting for your response.
(Usha Pokharel is an educationist, consultant and author of several children’s books. She can be reached at usha@pokharel.net.)
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