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Bricetofly (talk | contribs) →Colored objects: Add a plastic with funny coloration Tags: Reverted Visual edit |
Not really accurate or useful to say. Mirrors are not invisible. You can see a mirrored object just fine under most conditions. |
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}}</ref> The rays represent [[luminous intensity]], which varies according to [[Lambert's cosine law]] for an ideal diffuse reflector.
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'''Diffuse reflection''' is the [[reflection (physics)|reflection]] of [[light]] or other [[
A surface built from a non-absorbing powder such as [[plaster]], or from fibers such as paper, or from a [[polycrystalline]] material such as white [[marble]], reflects light diffusely with great efficiency. Many common materials exhibit a mixture of specular and diffuse reflection.
The visibility of objects, excluding light-emitting ones, is primarily caused by diffuse reflection of light: it is diffusely-scattered light that forms the image of the object in
==Mechanism==
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Most materials can give some specular reflection, provided that their surface can be polished to eliminate irregularities comparable with the light wavelength (a fraction of a micrometer). Depending on the material and surface roughness, reflection may be mostly specular, mostly diffuse, or anywhere in between. A few materials, like liquids and glasses, lack the internal subdivisions which produce the subsurface scattering mechanism described above, and so give ''only'' specular reflection. Among common materials, only polished metals can reflect light specularly with high efficiency, as in aluminum or silver usually used in mirrors. All other common materials, even when perfectly polished, usually give not more than a few percent specular reflection, except in particular cases, such as [[Angle of incidence (optics)#Grazing angle|grazing angle]] reflection by a lake, or the ''[[total reflection]]'' of a glass prism, or when structured in certain complex configurations such as the silvery skin of many fish species or the reflective surface of a [[dielectric mirror]]. Diffuse reflection can be highly efficient, as in white materials, due to the summing up of the many subsurface reflections.
==Colored objects==
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