Importance For Vision
Looking at one's surrounding environment, the vast majority of visible objects are seen primarily by diffuse reflection from their surface. This holds with few exceptions, such as glass, reflective liquids, polished or smooth metals, glossy objects, and objects that themselves emit light: the Sun, lamps, and computer screens (which, however, emit diffuse light). Outdoors it is the same, with perhaps the exception of a transparent water stream or of the iridescent colors of a beetle. Additionally, Rayleigh scattering is responsible for the blue color of the sky, and Mie scattering for the white color of the water droplets of clouds.
Light scattered from the surfaces of objects is by far the primary light which humans visually observe.
Read more about this topic: Diffuse Reflection
Famous quotes containing the words importance and/or vision:
“What is done for science must also be done for art: accepting undesirable side effects for the sake of the main goal, and moreover diminishing their importance by making this main goal more magnificent. For one should reform forward, not backward: social illnesses, revolutions, are evolutions inhibited by a conserving stupidity.”
—Robert Musil (18801942)
“A novel is a mirror carried along a high road. At one moment it reflects to your vision the azure skies at another the mire of the puddles at your feet. And the man who carries this mirror in his pack will be accused by you of being immoral! His mirror shews [sic] the mire, and you blame the mirror! Rather blame that high road upon which the puddle lies, still more the inspector of roads who allows the water to gather and the puddle to form.”
—Stendhal [Marie Henri Beyle] (17831842)