Talk:White

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This page is completely missing even a definition of a white pigment or material -- something that reflects all light. Giving a summery of the whitest-known materials (reflect maximal amounts of light in different ranges) would be nice...

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.92.74.250 (talk) 19:02, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

In Hinduism, the people wear white cothing when someone dies

This article, it seems to me, confuses pigment color and light color, or, actually, ignores pigment color. I have no competence in this field, but it does seem that someone who does should take a look. Ortolan88

in some cultures white is associated with death

vietnamese people wear white at funerals, or so i heard

In Chinese culture, white is the funeral color as well. Fuzheado 03:18, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I've heard that in African cultures white meant death. --Dbenbenn 02:27, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] racial interpretation

Should the pages for "white", "whites" and "black" ("blacks" just redirects) be standardized somehow? Personally, I'd rather see the racial interpretation of "white" handled via "white (race)" or "white (ethnicity)" or whatever.... - dcljr 18:59, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I think we need to create white (disambiguation) page and move all except the color there. Same with black. The current disambig on the bottom (People whose surname is white, Other definitions) is just plain un-wiki and confusing. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 17:40, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] External link

Yesterday, User:Matthew Stannard added a link [1] to a course at a London community college entitled "The colour white". I reverted it [2]. Matt wrote on my talk page:

People who use an encyclopedia might be doing so because they want to learn something. People who want to learn more than the encyclopedia contains might be interested in finding out how. Putting a link on a page to a course specifically about the subject of the article might not add much, but it adds something, don't you think? Why take it out? I've put it back anyway. Matt Stan 12:12, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I decided to reply here. I don't think the link should be here because

  1. It doesn't actually tell you anything about white itself; it only indicates the existence of a course about white.
  2. It seems like a mild form of advertising.

Wikipedia isn't a link farm. But it isn't something I feel strongly about; I'm not going to remove it again. Dbenbenn 17:48, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I've removed it again, it really doesn't shed any light on the topic of the colour white. I have a really nice shirt that's white; that doesn't mean that should be mentioned in this article. Wikipedia is not a general knowledge base. --fvw* 00:28, 2005 Jan 9 (UTC)

[edit] Categorizing white

I recently created categories for colors as shades of R-O-Y-G-C-B-V. How can white be categorized in this?? Georgia guy 17:55, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It can't nor can magenta as far as I can see. Jimp 05:56, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Zero hue"?

The article says that white "has high brightness but zero hue". In the hue-saturation-lightness color model, at least, you get white when lightness is at a maximum, no matter what the hue. From this point of view, white is the lightest "light red", the lightest "light blue", the lightest "light green", and so on; so it doesn't seem to make sense to say that white has zero hue, because the "hue" of white is irrelevant. Does this make sense, or am I a raving crackpot? —Bkell 07:56, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

It makes sense to me. I've just changed it but I hadn't read your comments first. I've changed it to "has high brightness and no hue". Jimp 05:55, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] macs

Anyone besides me think that mentioning Apple Macintosh computers under the heading 'Computers' is off-topic? --Andymussell 21:32, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Word Root

I came here looking for the source of the word white. It has this info for days of the week and the names of months. anybody who knows anything about this want to add it?--Olsdude 02:00, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Picture

What does white look like? I would like a picture. P.S. I'm blind.


Added reference to Korea, and separated India from East Asia. In India, the symbolic representation of white has similarities with East Asian cultures, but ultimately represents different things. Intranetusa (talk) 17:47, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] "White" outside of visibility

the visible part of light is just a small section of a much much larger spectrum, so could an object be visibly white, yet non-visibly black, or vise-versa? that is, an object that, while it reflects all visible light, absorbs infrared and ultraviolet light. this would mean that two different white objects could have much different efficiencies when used to reflect light to keep something cool for instance. just a thought. Sahuagin (talk) 18:09, 16 February 2008 (UTC)