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  • Bright Black exhibit
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Bright Black

Can you tell the difference between black and white?

At this exhibit, find out how subjective brightness can be as you struggle—and fail—to correctly decide whether the squares you see are black or white. 


Where:   Bechtel Gallery 3: Seeing & Reflections
Exhibit Developers:   Ulrika Andersson and Richard O. Brown, 2001

What’s going on?

Your perception of an object’s color is affected by both its lighting and its surroundings. The first card you see in this exhibit is actually black—but it’s brightly lit. When it’s the only card in the light, it may look gray or even white. But as you raise lighter cards, each new card looks white and the previous cards look darker by comparison.

 

Going further

An astronaut standing on the moon.Our moon is also a brightly lit dark object—it’s dark gray, but in the spotlight of the Sun, it looks white. This photograph of the moon’s surface shows how dark it really is. Photo courtesy of NASA.gov.
(click image to enlarge)

 

External resources

Alan Gilchrist website.

 
Phenomena: Albedo, Color, Reflection
Keywords: moon, simultaneous contrast
Aliases: Black Card/White Card
Collections: Seeing

More to explore

Science activity that uses color chromatography to discover the secret colors hidden in black ink
Separation Anxiety

Use color chromatography to separate black ink.

Science activity that explores heat absorption by different-colored materials
Give and Take

Dark-colored materials absorb and emit energy more readily than light-colored materials.

Science activity that explores an optical illusion
Sliding Gray Step

The perceived color of an object depends on its background.

Science activity that demonstrates a color illusion
Benham's Disk

A rotating black-and-white disk produces the illusion of color.

Related exhibits

Gray Step
Gray Step

Your visual system uses edges to detect differences.

Disagreeing About Color
Disagreeing About Color

Color is in the eye of the beholder.

Benham's Disk
Benham's Disk

The colors you see here are all in your head.

Color of Water
Color of Water

The color of the water changes. What’s affecting it today?


IMLS acknowledgment

This web project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services [MA-30-16-0175-16].

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