why do dark colors absorb heat?
355167
because they do not reflect the heat or light,like dark trees absorb heat and light  or white barked one ,like birch reflect the radiation or heat.\nwhite roofs are cool underneath they reflect the sun,black roofs are hot they absorb. the heat
503180
Darker colors absorb the sun's rays and heat is built up.  Lighter colors tend to reflect and they stay cooler.  That's why people tend to wear white or light colors in the summer and dark colors in the winter.
700772
Because the color of any object which does not emit light is really due to the effect of reflection, there are various ways in which color is "generated".\n\nThe color spectrum is Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet.  Because the light emitted by the Sun is most intense in the Yellow part of the spectrum, we see Yellow as the brightest "color".  Go in any direction away from Yellow and we see darker and darker colors. \n\nWe see the color of an object as the summation of the light that is reflected by that object.  When a piece of cloth or paper is wet, it absorbs water which fills in the spaces between the fibers.  Water reflects mostly in the blue spectrum, so that adds to the total light which is reflected by the object.  This added blue light makes the total light appear "darker" to us since it "drags" the spectrum of refelcted light away from Yellow.
806004
They are attracted to heat and light.
728020
any solution gives colour due to the fact that the outermost electrons absorb the energy and move to a highre orbit corrospondingly. when they come back to their orignal state, the enegry is emitted in the form of photons, which may have the wavelength crrspndngly to a colour.
563599
The answer would depend on the color to the samples.  Since dark colors absorp(Suck in) heat easier, black dirt would be warmer than tan sand if the were both in the same temperature and sun
614148
Clothes have a lot of fibres sticking out from them which give them that fuzzy feeling. These fibres diffract light and thus reduce the intensity of the reflected colour. When its wet, the fibres collapse or are all aligned in one direction, this doesn't diffract light to that extent and the colour is dark.
350389
white is better as it basically reflects the sun so u stay cooler where as black absorbs the sun which is why u get hotter. Light colors jsut keep you cooler thats all there is to it
275302
"Normal" color pigments reflect (more precisely, they don't absorb) light having wavelengths corresponding to the perceived color of the pigment, and they absorb light with other frequencies.  The energy associated with the absorbed light goes ends up heating the material (i.e., into exciting atomic and molecular vibrations in the compounds in the pigment).  That energy is ultimately removed by thermal conduction (exciting atomic/molecular vibrations in material adjacent to the material doing the absorption), or re-radiated as low-frequency (e.g., infrared) electromagnetic radiation that we cannot see.\n\nFluorescent pigments differ in that some of the light energy that is absorbed gets re-radiated at wavelengths we can see.  In effect, fluorescent compounds convert incoming light of one wavelength into (visible) light of another wavelength, so the material seems to "glow" with a color corresponding to the wavelengths being emitted.  Normally, the re-emitted light has a longer wavelength (lower photon energy) than that of the absorbed light.  (It is possible for fluorescent emission to occur at a shorter wavelength than that of the absorbed light, but conservation of energy requires that the energy of the absorbed photon be "supplemented" with energy from some other source, such as the vibrational energy of the material or by absorption of multiple photons and emission of a single photon.)\n\nA detailed description of the physics involved can be found at <http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/techniques/fluorescence/fluorescenceintro.html>\n\nThere are numerous fluorescent compounds, each with distinctive absorption and emission characteristics <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Fluorescent_dyes>.   .  As an example, see the spectra of rhodamine B (a very important fluoroscent dye) at <http://omlc.ogi.edu/spectra/PhotochemCAD/html/rhodamineB.htmlz>.
1179824
Lighter colors reflect sunlight .Trust me ,I have owned a black truck and they get damn hot.Lighter ones get hot but nowhere near as hot as a dark one
1057725
As electricity flows into certain atoms (which make up LEDs), energy is transferred to the electrons in the atoms.  Those electrons absorb energy and rise to a higher excited state.  At some later point in time, those electrons fall to a lower energy state.  The difference in energy between the higher state and the lower state is emitted as a photon.  The amount of energy in the photon determines the color.
1028258
the pigments absorb certain colours and reflect and transmit others .\nthese reflected colours of light give the pigments their colour.\nso a red pigment absorbs all colours other than red and hence appears red.\nthis holds for other colours as well. hence when we mix all the colours we get black because then all colours of light are absorbed and hence no colour is reflected for which it appears black\nby this i  mean that red absorbs all colours ecept red blue all colours except blue and so on.\nnow blue is absorbed by red pigment and red is absorbed by blue and so on\nhence if we mix all the pigments we get black colour
826131
Each chemical absorbs a different portion of the light band. The portions that are not absorbed are what give things color. If you're looking at the spectral analysis of a star, you can tell what chemicals are present by the black bands on the light spectrum, which represent absorbed light. If that color is absorbed, then the corresponding chemical must be present.
72663
Its a cute question. :-)\nLet me explain it this way.\n\nShadows arent necessarily objects themselves. \nThey are just a patch of surface, which dont recieve direct light from the source (sun, lamp etc), but only recieve the scattered rays of light. \nAnd for this reason, these patches are dimly lit, making it look darker than the surrounding, which in our daily terms is 'black'. :-)
332150
dark fabric dries the fastest and is what you need to avoid wearing on hot summer days because dark colors attracts heat.
432633
Although they are part of the same phenomenon, heat and light are at different wavelengths; Imagine a Rainbow going from Red to Blue, the radiation wavelengths behave in a similar way, thus, the heat from the Sun is derived from the "red" end of the spectrum, the Light from the Blue end all travelling together at the same velocity.
667275
Pigments that absorb light rather than reflect it back to the eye "look black". A black pigment can, however, result from a combination of several pigments that collectively absorb all colors. If appropriate proportions of three primary pigments are mixed, the result reflects so little light as to be called "black".\n\nThis provides two superficially opposite but actually complementary descriptions of black. Black is the lack of all colors of light, or an exhaustive combination of multiple colors of pigment. \nIn physics, a black body is a perfect absorber of light, but by a rule derived by Einstein it is also, when heated, the best emitter. Thus, the best radiative cooling, out of sunlight, is by using black paint, though it is important that it be black (a nearly perfect absorber) in the infrared as well.\n\nIn elementary science far Ultraviolet light is called "black light" because, unseen (per se), it causes many minerals and other substances to fluoresce.