White

White

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

White is a shade, the perception of which is evoked by light that stimulates all three types of color sensitive cone cells in the human eye in nearly equal amounts and with high brightness compared to the surroundings. A white visual stimulation will be void of hue and grayness.

White light can be generated in many ways. The sun is such a source, electric incandescence is another.

Modern light sources are fluorescent lamps and light-emitting diodes. An object whose surface reflects back most of the light it receives and does not alter its color will appear white, unless it has very high specular reflection.

Since white objects such as clouds, snow and flowers appear often in nature, human culture has many references to white, often related to purity and cleanness. The high contrast between white and black is used to represent opposites. In some Asian cultures, white is considered to be a color that represents death.

White also represented death in ancient Egypt, representing the lifeless desert that covered much of the country; black was held to be the color of life, representing the mud-covered fertile lands created by the flooding of the Nile and giving the country its name (Kemet, or "black land")

Symbolic dualism with Black

White and black has the biggest visual contrast, this can easily be associated to other opposite concepts such as day and night or good and evil. White often represents purity or innocence in Western Civilization, particularly as white clothing or objects are easy to stain. In most Western countries white is worn by brides at weddings. Angels are typically depicted as clothed in white robes.

Healing or "good" magic is called White magic. In early film Westerns the sterotypically "good guy" wore a white hat earning them the name "White Hats" while the "bad guy" wore black earning them the name "Black Hats". This has given rise to the use of the names black hot and white hat for people who abuse and counter abuse of computer systems respectively. In popular culture this idea is sometimes reversed to play on reversal of sterotypes.

In taoism which has great influence in Eastern Culture Yin and yang is usually depicted in black and white, depicting the two colors as opposites. The two opponets in board games of abstract strategy often has one as white, such as go, chess and checkers.