Color is one of the principle elements of the visual arts.
It is useful for artists to understand how colors are formed as well as how they are perceived. For the purposes of this class we will look first at color theory and then use this knowledge to explore why one chemical compound will give one color while a second compound generates another color. We will also look briefly at spectroscopy, a means of looking at the variations of intensities in light of different wavelengths across the whole spectrum of visible light. Here we will pay particular attention to the wavelengths of light that have been removed from the overall spectrum by interaction with matter. Chemists can use this technique as a way of determining which compounds are present, as a way of investigating the structure of compounds that are present, or as a means to determine how much of a particular compound is present.