• Question: If light was "black light" as opposed to "white light" would everything be black?

    Asked by winterhorse to Charlotte, Colin, Becki, Rick on 27 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Rebecca Scott

      Rebecca Scott answered on 27 Jun 2013:


      ‘black light’ is the name given to lamps that give out UV light (so lower than the visible light range). This makes certain things fluoresce in the dark. So when you visit a haunted house at a theme park and everything white that you are wearing glows, this is because they are using a UV or black light. But, our eyes can only really see things in the visible light range, so if everything was black light we just wouldn’t be able to see properly.

    • Photo: Rick Smith

      Rick Smith answered on 27 Jun 2013:


      Well this depends if you mean black light like the UV lamps that Rebecca mentioned or if you mean black as the opposite to white?

      If you mean the opposite to white then: There is no such thing as black light, it is just no light. Because when we see something is black it is because there is no light that we can see coming from that object. When something is white it is because all the colours of light we can see are coming from that object.

      There are other colours of light that we can’t see, like ultra violet, infra red and even X-rays, but since out eyes can’t detect these wavelengths of light the object would still look black.

    • Photo: Charlotte Dalton

      Charlotte Dalton answered on 27 Jun 2013:


      black is the colour we see when there is no light, so black light would be no light and everything would be dark (we would not even be here as Earth couldn’t get energy from sunlight). But like Becki and Rick said it can also mean UV light which we can’t see but some insects and birds can

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