Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Project 3 - Natural & Artificial Light Research

Natural & Artificial Light

Sunlight, when broken up by means of a prism, is found to be composed of the colour bands of the spectrum - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. These different colours represent different rates of vibration, increasing as we go from red to violet, while their wavelengths decrease. These visible rays give us sensations of light, colour and heat. In addition to these colour rays, sunlight also contains other rays not perceptible to our ocular sense and therefore invisible.

Artificial light does not radiate a complete spectrum but instead produces a light with an excess of one or more of the colour rays. In the case of incandescent lighting, most of its light is yellow, orange and red, whereas the standard "cool white" fluorescent light emits mostly yellow-green light. The various so called "sunlamps" produce either too much ultraviolet or too much infrared radiation and are definitely harmful. They may cause headaches, third-degree burns and severe conjunctivitis.


It will be harmful to have both natural and artificial light directly shinning on to the artistic work since it will destroy the original colour of the work. Sunlight will damage all the colours in the spectrum where as artificial light will damage the colour of the light bulb. So it is not good to have it directly facing the light with the work.

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