Briefly explain what happens to light as it attempts to pass through these particles in the plastic. A dyeless paint contains only transparent particles in its layer of plastic. This paint appears white because light emerges from the paint heading in all directions. Lead carbonate is a clear, toxic chemical that was put in paints before 1930 to make them white. The speed of light in a particle of lead carbonate isn't that much slower than in plastic.
Modern paints contain particles of clear, nontoxic titanium dioxide.
Light travels very slowly in this material. Explain why titanium dioxide based paints look so white, even after only a single layer of paint. The electronic flash in a typical camera is based on a xenon flashlamp, a tube filled with xenon gas at high pressure with an electrode at each end. This flashlamp is electrically connected to a small but powerful capacitor to form a circuit so that if the flashlamp were to conduct current, it would allow current to flow from one plate of the capacitor to the other. Before you take a picture, the camera places separated electric charge on the two plates of the capacitor until a voltage drop of about 300 V appears across the xenon flashlamp.