What does the universe look like in color?

Experiment 3: "Breaking down" a color scene,
using filters
The purpose of this activity is to observe what happens when a fullcolor
scene is viewed successively through a red-, green-, and then
blue-passing filter.
• Any color scene can be separated into the brightness and
darkness of its red, green, and blue components.
1. Have students answer the questions and make their
predictions in their science journals.
What are the major colors in this scene?
Which areas of the picture do you think will appear the
brightest when you look through the red-passing filter?
Which will be darkest? How about the other filters?
What do you observe?
The major colors in the scene are red, green, blue,
yellow, brown, and white. When viewed through the
red-passing filter, the brightest areas should be the red
areas, namely the red flowers. The blue and green areas
will be darker. Since the color white has some red in it
(it is composed of red, green, and blue), the house
should also appear bright. The yellow sunflower will
also appear bright in both the red-passing and greenpassing
filters, since yellow is made from both red and
green light.