This first Link does a great job about explaining how light works at a basic level. White light is actually made of all of the colors of the rainbow because it contains all wavelengths, and it is described as polychromatic light. Light from a torch or the Sun is a good example of this. Light from a laser is monochromatic, which means it only produces one color. (Lasers are extremely dangerous and can cause permanent eye damage.
The retina of our eyes contains two types of photoreceptors – rods and cones. The cones detect color. The rods only let us see things in black, white and grey. Our cones only work when the light is bright enough, but not when light is very dim. This is why things look grey and we cannot see colors at night when the light is dim.
This site offers a color subtraction and addition interactive model that makes it easy to understand how colors filter when you add and subtract.
This site is great to watch short clips to better understand just exactly how color mixing occurs with light. The animation clips show us what happens with the light we cant see. You can see the different effects of images on computer screens and what completes them. Color is all around us; it’s at our work, our home, its there when we are hanging out with friends, and there when we shut our eyes. It is impossible to miss or try to ignore becasue even where there is an absence of color (black) we still have a color.
