Lecture to explore the science of colour

Why is fire yellow? Why is your gas hob blue? What makes traffic lights red, amber and green? These phenomena and many others will be examined in a free public lecture on Thursday 17 September at the Ground Floor Lecture Theatre 3 of the Ken Edwards Building at 6.30pm.

Research postgraduate Mike McNally from the Department of Physics and Astronomy will present the talk ‘Colour and the Structure of Matter’ as part of a lecture series celebrating the International Year of Light 2015, where he will look at how an understanding of what colour is and what causes it is linked to the techniques used to investigate new materials produced in the Condensed Matter Physics laboratories at the University.

Dr Darren Wright from the Department of Physics and Astronomy said: “Colour is all around us and yet few people stop to think what colour is and what causes it. It leads back to some very important fundamental physics and understanding the spectrum of light leads us not only to everyday applications which are important and useful to society but also to wildly different concepts, such as how fast the Universe is expanding!”