Wait, so does an object itself actually physically do something when light is reflected or refracted on the item to show the item color? Like for instance a red ball?

Question

Wait, so does the object itself actually physically do something when light is reflected or refracted on the item to show the item color? Like for instance a red ball? Is the object itself physically doing anything?

Answer 1

Not really. The object itself does not "do" anything, physically or otherwise. Depending on it;s surface, the light will be reflected at a certain angle and if the object allows any of the light to pass into its surface it will be bent somewhat, i.e. refracted.

Answer 2

If you are asking about a solid red ball then yes the object does do something.

When you shine natural light (white light) on the ball think of what happens.

White light is made up of all colors Red Orange Yellow Green , Blue, Indigo, Violet.

Newton demonstrated this using a prism (it's also a famous drawing assosicated with a famous band).

Refraction (the bending of light) deals with light passing through a medium.

Your question seems to be about Reflection.

If the object appears to be red that means it absorbs the other colors and only reflects the color red.

If you were to take the same object under blue light the object would appear to be black (as there is no red light to reflect). So the appearance of an object actually depends on the light source.