Okay everyone today
I'm super excited because I just received in the mail today from lab sphere a material called spectral on and
Spectral on is known as the whitest white in the world
So this is the whitest thing on planet Earth now, I have it in a bag here. So you can't quite see it yet
I'm gonna put some gloves on and be taking it out and doing a few experiments on it and
Showing you just how white this actually is
I'm going to be comparing spectral on the whitest white to the world's blackest black paint, Black 3.0
Now one of the experiments I want to try on it is I want to shine my burning laser on it
I'm gonna first shine my burning laser on something like black
3.0 and then something that just has a regular
Color and show you how the laser will burn it and then I'm going to shine it on my spectral on here
and I'm going to see if it can burn it at all because technically
Spectral on is the widest white so it should reflect light better than anything else in the entire world
So let's do a test on it and see what actually happens when you shine a laser on
Spectral on now in order to fully appreciate just how white this is
First we have to define a little bit what white actually means now I have here a white piece of paper
This piece of paper is white because it reflects all of the wavelengths of light off of its surface
Equally that doesn't mean it reflects all of the light coming on to it
What it means is that it reflects everything equally whereas this red piece of paper
It reflects only the red light coming on to it. And so all of the green and blue light are absorbed by the paper
So it's no longer white. So white light comes onto the paper, but only red light leaves it now this seems pretty simple
This is why this is red. So then what color is this? Large metal sphere is it white?
Well one thing that's different from this big metal sphere here in this white paper is I can see my reflection in this ball
But I can't see my reflection in this white paper
So it seems like we have two things that are reflecting light, but they don't look the same
So how do we define the difference between these two things this white paper reflects all wavelengths of visible light and equal
But this metallic ball also reflects all wavelengths of visible light in equal magnitude, but it looks different
So we have to introduce another definition of reflectance here. We can't just call both of these the same thing because they look different
So obviously the light reflecting off of both of these objects is different and what's different about them is the angle that the light
Reflecting now for this white paper here. The reflected light is called diffuse reflectance
whereas for this metallic ball here
The reflected light is called specular reflection and let me show you the difference between these two
Okay now specular reflection like this metal ball here looks like this when a light ray hits the surface
It gets reflected
at the same angle that it comes in at so it hits the surface and it gets reflected like this and because it reflects at
The same angle that it came in at it preserves the images location
And so basically if we had a tiny point source of light here
The reflection would show a tiny point source of light also
Because there's only one angle that the light can go and this is called specular reflectance
This is something like a mirror or a metallic object
Now diffuse reflection is a little bit different, what happens in diffuse reflection is the light doesn't only hit this top surface here and reflect off
But what happens is it goes into the material a little bit.
But what happens is it goes into the material a little bit?
Meaning what happens is the light goes into the material and it hits tiny little surface boundaries
So with diffuse reflection what happens is the light comes in and it hits the surface and some of the light gets reflected
Just like the metal ball did but some of the light actually goes through
Into the material and that light that went through goes and it hits the next surface below it and this next boundary
So there's ten tiny little cells or different crystal structures within it and so that light hits the next surface and then it gets reflected
At the same angle that it came in at and then it goes through that and hits the next surface and gets reflected
And then it goes through that and hits the next surface and then it goes and then some of it goes through that and hits
The next surface and gets reflected
That also hits these surfaces and gets reflected back down. This gets reflected back down x2 and so what happens is the light comes in and because some of it always passes through and hits another surface and then
Depending on the angle of that surface the light reflects back at that angle and some of it goes through and some of it hits another surface.
So the light just basically spreads out in the material in every direction
because some of it always passes through and hits another surface and then
Depending on the angle of that surface the light reflects back at that angle and some of it goes through and some of it hits
Another surface. So the light just basically spreads out in the material in every direction
And so what happens with diffuse reflection is no matter what your incoming angle of light is
You just get a bunch of light coming off of it in every direction
And so that means if you had a tiny little point source of light right here
You couldn't tell where that light was coming from. It's not like you end up with a tiny little point source here
What happens is you get a bunch of light everywhere?
And so that's why with this white piece of paper
Even though the light from my hand is hitting this and coming back at the camera
You can't see the reflection on here because the light from my hand is going every direction
And so you can't form an image that way
Whereas on this ball here the light from my hand is hitting the ball and then hitting the camera at the same angle
It came in at and that happens for every part of my hand
And so it preserves the image as it moves to the camera
It doesn't just get spread out everywhere like this piece of paper. And so the differences between these two
Is that both of these reflect all of the wavelengths of light and equal?
magnitude that when they hit them but the metallic ball preserves the incoming angle whereas the white paper doesn't and
So now you can finally start to understand the definition of white white has to involve diffuse reflection
It has to be a very good diffuser of light and it spreads it in every direction
Whereas a mirror doesn't look white, but what color would you define this ball as well?
Most likely you'd say that this is grey
We know that the ball isn't white because this paper is white and they don't look the same
well
the reason this looks grey because grey is
Actually just less white and I can prove that by just looking at my shadow here on this paper
So look at the shadow on this paper if you had to define this color
You'd call it grey and what it means is it's less white
So we know that this ball here is just less white me gray
The reason that mirrors look gray
And the reason that this metallic ball looks gray is because not exactly all of the light hitting it gets reflected
Some of it gets absorbed and so any light that's bouncing off of it is dimmer than the light around it
So what I mean is that the white paper is reflecting off of this ball
But notice the reflection is darker than the white here. And because it's darker we call it gray
It just looks like it there's kind of a shadow on it
so it looks great to us and that's because some of the light from the white paper is
Absorbed into the metal most of it is reflected, but some of it is absorbed
So everything is slightly dimmer in the reflection and because everything is slightly dimmer, it looks great
So now that we understand what white is now we can appreciate just how white
Spectra lawn actually is so spectra lawn is the widest white and what I mean by that is it has the highest diffuse
reflectance of any material on earth and
because this is the widest white what it means is that no matter what I
Compare it to any white that I compare it to in the room should be slightly dimmer
Looking than this white because this is reflecting a little bit more light so spectral on reflects over
99% of visible light hitting it. Okay. Let's see what spectral on looks like
And then after this, we're gonna shine our laser on it and see if we can actually burn it oh
Look at that
Now, this is crazy. Look how white this is. It looks like it's practically glowing
Blue the widest thing I've ever seen. This is so cool. Now the reason it looks so white is because it's reflecting over
99% of all light hitting it and it diffusive ly reflects all visible light hitting it at the same
Magnitude and so it keeps the same white light coming into it. Okay. This is comparing it to my
Somewhat off-white wall here
And then this is comparing it to my white door
Look how white it is
So it's like not even comparable not even the same color
Now if I were to change the color of light that means that it would also reflect that exact same color of light hitting it
So you can see that if we shine blue light on it it reflects exactly blue
and
No matter what color of light we shine on it
And reflects that color exactly
So if we shine red light on it it's perfectly red
and if we shine green light on it, then it's perfectly green and
Blue light on it is perfectly blue. And so no matter what wavelength of light we shine on it
It reflects that wavelength of light perfectly
Okay, now we've seen what spectral on looks like compared to regular materials
It looks really white, but let's compare it to some of the blackest stuff on earth black 3.0
This is known as the world's blackest paint on the market. So this is just a normal lid that I painted with black 3.0
Let's see what it looks like when I lay it right next to the spectral on
so the blackest black paint means that it absorbs the most light out of any other paint and
The widest white means it reflects the most light out of any other material on earth
So now that I have these here
Let's go ahead and shine my burning laser on them and see how the burning laser effects the blackest black or the whitest white
Okay. So here's my burning laser. Watch what happens when I shine on my black construction paper here
It just immediately starts on fire
You can burn a hole right through it
So if I shine on my black 3.0 it should absorb even more light than the black construction paper and it should burn even quicker
So now let's see what it does to the spectral on see if it actually even gets warm
Okay, here we go. Three two one
Nothing look how bright that is on there though look at it compared to the black
So look at it compared to our black 3.0 it's crazy the difference there so
Let's see if it even feels warm after
I don't feel any heat on there at all so I can leave it on there for a long time
And it's not warm at all
So the reason this isn't getting warm is because I'm over
99% of the light hitting it is getting diffused all over so this gives you a good idea of how
Diffusion works so you can see this beam of light coming in here and you can see when it hits this
Then it suddenly lights up the entire room
It's like a light turns on
Alright everyone
Thanks for watching the whitest white versus the blackest black
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Head over to the action lab comm now, and I'd like to thank lab sphere again for sending me this spectra
Log-normally this stuff is extremely expensive to buy but they sent it to me for free to use in my video