Glowy!

Have you ever seen a black light? Most people have, but probably don't know what it is. A black light is much different than your typical "normal" or white light. The human eye sees the range of the colors of the rainbow. Nothing more. White light is the light the sun gives off. Man-made white light is the brightest light bulb you've ever seen. The white light has the colors of the rainbow in it, the most often seen being red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. Now black light, or essentially no light at all, doesn't have any of these colors. (Now you're probably looking up into space thinking, "There's no light up there, no colors, those aliens must not need to see!" but there is a wider range of light and color, in which cannot see. We probably see as much to the aliens as a black and white movie.) If you look at the keyboard in front of you, you see, whatever color the keyboard is. That is the color that white light reflects to your eyes, so it's essentially every color but that. Take a highlighter, and draw somewhere on your body. It doesn't matter where, but keep it appropiate. You can barely see it, right? That's because white light does not reflect much off of highlighter ink. (You may think it reflects well on paper, but just wait) Now highlight on a piece of paper. It's very bright, yes? Now take a black light and shine it on the highlighter on the paper and your skin. On your skin, you can see exactly what you wrote, quite clearly, correct? And on paper, it's very bright. This is because the highlighter reflects the darker light rays better than the white light rays. If you find a scorpion, shine the black light on it, but with caution. You'll notice it glows. This is because it's blood contains substances that reflect dark rays much better than white rays. Have fun coloring yourself with highlighter!