Original photo by asadykov/ iStock
In April 2021, scientists from Purdue University revealed a new shade of white paint. At first glance, it may look like any other plain white hue found at the local paint store. But unlike those other pigments, Purdue’s white paint reflects 98.1% of the sun’s rays. (Most white paints, by contrast, reflect only about 80% to 90%.)
Oops, incorrect!
It's a factAlthough a child’s drawing typically depicts the sun as a yellow orb, our host star appears white when not filtered by the Earth’s atmosphere. Technically it emits the most light in the blue-green spectrum, but we perceive it as white because it emits all colors.
According to Guinness World Records, that reflective ability makes the paint the whitest white that’s ever been created. And what Purdue’s hue lacks in chromatic sophistication, it more than makes up for in utility. According to The New York Times, if between 1% and 2% of the world’s surface (about half the size of the Sahara) could be coated with this ultra-white paint, “the planet would no longer absorb more heat than it was emitting.” Although painting half the Sahara is not in the cards, painting the many, many rooftops that dot the world could help fight our current planetary fever while also cutting A/C costs. At midday, for example, the new paint makes surfaces 8 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than the surrounding ambient air temperature.
On the other end of the visual spectrum, of course, there’s Vantablack — a color that absorbs 99% of ultraviolet light and is considered one of the darkest materials ever made. And like the white yang to its black yin, Vantablack (made of carbon nanotubes) also has its distinct advantages, specifically in improving high-end optics for cameras and telescopes, in part by reducing glare. Perhaps that means that when it comes to color engineering, it helps to think in extremes.
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The British monarch ______ is the main reason why brides wear white dresses.
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The British monarch Queen Victoria is the main reason why brides wear white dresses.
White noise is called “white” because it contains all audible sound frequencies.
We’re all familiar with the visual aspects of color, but what about the audible ones? Sound is also said to have shades of color, including pink, red, blue, green, and gray. The most common sound that’s associated with a color is white, or that jumble of noise you hear when tuned to an unused radio frequency. Similar to how white contains all colors in the visual spectrum, white noise contains all frequencies in the audible spectrum, from about 20 hertz to 20,000 hertz. With pink noise (or what some might call “ambient noise”), energy decreases as the frequency increases, which sounds more pleasant to our ears as a result. Similarly, other audio “hues” contain different sound properties — brown noise sounds more bass-heavy, while blue noise is more shrill compared to pink noise.
Darren Orf lives in Portland, has a cat, and writes about all things science and climate. You can find his previous work at Popular Mechanics, Inverse, Gizmodo, and Paste, among others.
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