White

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 often used to represent opposites. In some cultures, like Chinese, white is considered to be a color that represents death.[citation needed] On the other hand in many cultures white represents purity, freedom, and hygenic purity.

The word white continues Old English hwīt, ultimately from a Common Germanic *xwītaz also reflected in OHG (h)wîz, ON hvítr, Goth. ƕeits. The root is ultimately from a PIE *kwid-, surviving also in Sanskrit śveta "to be white or bright" and perhaps Slavic svet' "light".

Until Newton's work became accepted, most scientists believed that white was the fundamental color of light; and that other colors were formed only by adding something to light. Newton demonstrated this was not true by passing white light through a prism, then through another prism. If the colors were added by the prism, the second prism should have added further colors to the single-colored beam. Since the single-colored beam remained a single color, Newton concluded that the prism merely separated the colors already present in the light. White light is the effect of combining the visible colors of light in equal proportions.

In astronomy the stellar class of stars are determined by the color temperature. For instance are white dwarfs small dense stars thought to be the final evolutionary state.

White light reflected off objects can be seen when no part of the light spectrum is reflected significantly more than any other and the reflecting material has a degree of diffusion. People see this when transparent fibers, particles, or droplets are in a transparent matrix of a substantially different refractive index. Examples include classic "white" substances such as sugar, foam, pure sand or snow, cotton, clouds, and milk. Crystal boundaries and imperfections can also make otherwise transparent materials white, as in the milky quartz or the microcrystalline structure of a seashell. This is also true for artificial paints and pigments, where white results when finely divided transparent material of a high refractive index is suspended in a contrasting binder. Typically paints contain calcium carbonate and/or synthetic rutile with no other pigments if a white color is desired.

In painting, white can be crafted by reflecting ambient light from a white pigment, although the ambient light must be white light, or else the white pigment will appear the color of the light. White when mixed with black produces gray. In watercolor painting, white areas mark the absence of paint on the paper.

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