The difference in terms of reflection, between objects that appears yellow and objects that appears blue?
1 Answer
Objects that appear yellow, reflect lots of yellow light.
Objects that appear blue, reflect lots of blue light.
Explanation:
I assume that we are talking about objects being viewed under "normal" lighting conditions (regular sun-light or a regularly lit room - NOT a dark room lit by a red lamp or anything silly).
Regular white light is a mixture of several colours:
red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple (or indigo + violet if you don't like purple).
when these 6 lights combine they form what we perceive as "white light". Rainbow are of course produced when water droplets split up this white light into the constituent colours.
When white light hits an object, some of the colours are absorbed by the object and some are reflected away for your eye to "see".
that yellow object, reflected lots of yellow light and absorbed a fair bit of the purple light.
Whereas the blue object absorbed lots of the orange light and reflected the blue light to your eyes.
see for more detail, detail on light absorption / reflection and perception of colour
