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Colour is made in many different ways.
How do some animals make "glow in the dark" colours?
How is a colour print made?
Where does the colour in food come from?
Can you mix coloured lights?
Have you ever seen glowing organisms in oceans, caves or under logs? These organisms make their own light through a process called bioluminescence. This light is created by a chemical reaction occurring in special cells within the organism.
Bioluminescence:
occurs most often in marine life.
occurs in some fungi and insects.
produces mostly green, blue, yellow and red light.
The Hatchetfish, Argyropelecus gigas, lives in the dark ocean depths 400 to 600 m below the surface. The light-producing organs (photophores) on the body and head break up the silhouette of the fish when viewed from below. This may reduce the chance of it being eaten by a predator.
Mixing coloured light can be fun!
What colour do you make when you combine red, green and blue lights?
What colours do you get if you mix just two colours?
How are the coloured pictures in books and magazines made? One way is to print four slightly different versions of the picture on top of each other. Each version is a different colour. When combined, the four colours make a wide range of different colours.
One printing method, called subtractive colour mixing, uses four ink colours: cyan (blue-green), magenta (blue-red), yellow and black
Bored with the same old burger colours? Try our new colour Wow-Burgers! Now you can have any colour burger you want! Which Wow-Burger would you prefer?
Keep-it-like-it-is
The colour of food is due to chemical pigments in the food.
Better-than-nature
Many processed foods have colours added to them to make them more
appealing.
Dare-to-be-different
When food colour is different to what we expect, it is less appealing.
Copyright © Australian Museum 1999, 2002