What are reflected wavelengths?

Reflected wavelengths are like colors that bounce off something and come back to our eyes, telling us what that something is.

Imagine you're playing with a shiny ball in the sunlight. When light hits the ball, some of it goes through the ball (we call that absorbed), but some of it bounces back, that’s reflected. The colors we see are those reflected bits of light.

A red apple looks red because it reflects the red part of the light and absorbs the other colors. A blue shirt reflects blue and absorbs the rest.

Think of a prism, like the one in a rainbow. It splits white light into all its wavelengths, which are like different colors. Each color has a specific wavelength, and when something reflects those wavelengths, that's what we see!

When you look at something, your eyes catch the reflected wavelengths and your brain figures out what it is. That’s how we know if something is red, blue, green, or even white!