Jason E. Andersen

When things get wet, they appear darker. Like rain on concrete or spilling a drink on your shirt. If you’re like me, you probably haven’t consider why this is. Until now!

Bonus Fun Fact: Wet objects reflect less light back to your eyeballs than they do when they’re dry, which makes them appear darker. It has to do with the magic of physics and how light travels and bounces off of things. When light hits solid objects, like concrete or t-shirts, much of the light is reflected at sharp angles back towards you, which your eyes receive and perceive as color. However, when that same stuff is wet, the light first hits the thin layer of moisture, which bends and diffuses the light on its way to the object, the light is then reflected by the object, and then bent and diffused more by the water on the way back out. By the time the light is received by your eye, it is a fraction of the light that would be received if the object were dry.