color loss at depth

Island Diving · Jun 27, 2011

Ok, here's a question for our physics majors. We all know that water acts as a filter, and that as we go deeper we progressively lose the ability to see colors without the use of artificial light. Today I had a very unusual experience that I cannot explain.

I am diving with a Whites Hazmat suit, the color is bright orange. I am also wearing a pair of Caiman ballistic nylon mechanic's gloves which are a very similar bright orange. When I get down to 135 feet I notice that the gloves are still very bright orange while the suit appears to be a muddy brown. This is under ambient light conditions. The question is, why would the gloves fail to appear to "lose" their color? I have never noticed this phenomenon before and I am completely baffled.

Chillout · Jun 27, 2011

I would guess that it just has to do with the material that the gloves are made out of vs the suit. Seems the gloves do a better job of bouncing light off of them while the suit tends to absorb more of the same light.

DazedAndConfuzed · Jun 27, 2011

It could be due to the spectrum of light that these 2 objects reflect light to make it look orange. One could be broad spectrum, another could be narrow spectrum. Thus when you go deeper where the available light's spectrum changes dramatically from the surface, the amount of light that is reflected off changes, and the absorbed spectrum by the water could just coincide with what's reflected by the suit.

Also, your eyes has somewhat compensated for the lack of red light by rebalancing what you see to be more natural, thus you are able to see more 'red' from one or both items than if one took a picture of them with just natural lighting.

blackvans1234 · Jun 27, 2011

It could be the material?

Garrobo · Jun 27, 2011

It's caused by the color gremlins who lurk about at depth.

ClayJar · Jun 27, 2011

Island Diving:
I am diving with a Whites Hazmat suit, the color is bright orange. I am also wearing a pair of Caiman ballistic nylon mechanic's gloves which are a very similar bright orange. When I get down to 135 feet I notice that the gloves are still very bright orange while the suit appears to be a muddy brown. This is under ambient light conditions. The question is, why would the gloves fail to appear to "lose" their color? I have never noticed this phenomenon before and I am completely baffled.

I have a hypothesis for you and a simple experiment to test it.

The Whites Hazmat suit is rather effectively showing that there are no "oranges" to reflect at that depth, so where does the orange coming from the gloves originate? Quite simply, I hypothesize that it originates in the gloves themselves. The suit is purely *reflective*, but the gloves must be *fluorescent*.

In fluorescence, the material absorbs photons at one wavelength (often ultraviolet) and emits photons at another wavelength (in this case, orange). Ultraviolet light penetrates the water quite well (being off the short-wavelength end of our visible spectrum), so there should be sufficient UV to excite the fluorescence in the gloves. Additionally, as the total ambient light (and especially the ambient light in the "orange" region) is markedly less at 135 feet, the fluorescence makes the gloves appear bright orange.

A simple test would be to go to a dark area and shine an ultraviolet light on the Whites Hazmat suit and the gloves. The suit should appear dark, while the gloves should glow brightly orange. (A black light may be sufficient, as you probably don't have a set of long-, medium-, and short-wavelength filtered UV sources, but if you happen to know a geologist, fluorescence at different UV wavelengths can be quite fun.)

DivemasterDennis · Jun 27, 2011

After reading ClayJar's explanation, I fell I learned something. Thanks ClayJar.

g1138 · Jun 27, 2011

I think ClayJar has it. I checked Caiman's website and the only orange nylon glove I could find was "High Viz Orange".
I myself have a High Viz Orange line on my finger spool and always noticed the same.

Island Diving · Jun 27, 2011

Thanks ClayJar, that's an excellent answer, just what I was looking for! I will test the blacklight theory and post the results. I will also be using this setup at 185 feet in a couple of weeks, I'll let you know how the gloves appear at that depth........Bill

ClayJar:
I have a hypothesis for you and a simple experiment to test it.

The Whites Hazmat suit is rather effectively showing that there are no "oranges" to reflect at that depth, so where does the orange coming from the gloves originate? Quite simply, I hypothesize that it originates in the gloves themselves. The suit is purely *reflective*, but the gloves must be *fluorescent*.

In fluorescence, the material absorbs photons at one wavelength (often ultraviolet) and emits photons at another wavelength (in this case, orange). Ultraviolet light penetrates the water quite well (being off the short-wavelength end of our visible spectrum), so there should be sufficient UV to excite the fluorescence in the gloves. Additionally, as the total ambient light (and especially the ambient light in the "orange" region) is markedly less at 135 feet, the fluorescence makes the gloves appear bright orange.

A simple test would be to go to a dark area and shine an ultraviolet light on the Whites Hazmat suit and the gloves. The suit should appear dark, while the gloves should glow brightly orange. (A black light may be sufficient, as you probably don't have a set of long-, medium-, and short-wavelength filtered UV sources, but if you happen to know a geologist, fluorescence at different UV wavelengths can be quite fun.)

color loss at depth

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