>> ^Xax:

I don't follow.


Haha, okay. Then how about this: The color of the object involved does not necessarily have an effect on the kind of light that can pass through it. I could find seven different green translucent materials that might all have differing energy gaps, even though they all look green.

>> ^BicycleRepairMan:

>> ^xxovercastxx:
This leaves me with another question, unfortunately.
Let's stick with his example of green being high energy and red being low.
The photon only gets through the material if it's not strong enough to excite an electron. This makes sense for a translucent red material. The material's energy gap could be large enough to allow red light through but block all other.
This does not make sense for translucent green material. If the material's energy gap were large enough to allow green light through, it would also allow red light through, resulting in a translucent yellow material. This would seem to allow only red, orange, and then increasingly grey/colorless shades of yellow.
So what's missing from this explanation?

As I understand it(and I'm not sure I understood the question): Red is on a very low enegy level, so if the "energy gap" is large enough to let red pass, green will also pass, which means the light will be moving towards the white end of the spectrum. This means that if you want to make a translucent green material you need materials that absorbs or displace red (such as green plants)



Actually, because visible green light is at a higher energy level than red light, if an objects energy gap is high enough to let green light through, then red light will also pass through because it has even lower energy levels, not the other way around.

As far as a translucent green material is concerned, when we perceive an object to have color, it is because that objects atoms are arranged in such a way that it reflects that wavelength of light (green in this case) back to our eye, while either absorbing, refracting or letting pass through photons of other wavelengths. Just because a piece of glass is green does not mean it will not allow other higher and lower energy photons to pass through it.

I hope this clarifies things for you a bit!