The colors that we choose to paint rooms, houses, or buildings do more than just change the way it looks. Colors can affect one’s mood as well, but it can also have an impact on the overall temperature. This is because different colors absorb light differently, with some colors absorbing light more than others, which is why colors like black are known to retain heat.
In a bid to help reduce the need for air conditioning which can consume a lot of electricity and also release by-product gases into the atmosphere, researchers at Purdue University have developed a special form of white paint that they claim can reduce surface temperatures by up to 18 degrees Fahrenheit compared to their ambient surroundings, thus replicating the effects of a refrigerator but without consuming any energy at all.
This means that by using this paint to help paint buildings or rooms, it could drastically reduce the temperature in a room, which in turn reduces the need for appliances like air conditioning, or at least to the point where we can reduce how long we run them for. By helping cool down buildings, it can work in tandem with heating/cooling systems where if the building remains cool enough, then there won’t be a need for the air conditioning to kick in.
To top things off, this white paint can also reflect the heat far away into deep space, where according to the researchers, helps prevent the heat from getting trapped in the atmosphere and contribute towards global warming.
Filed in . Read more about Science. Source: purdue.edu