What is the color black?
A: Black is a color which results from the absence or complete absorption of
visible light.
It is an achromatic color, without what?
A: Hue, like white and gray.
It is often used symbolically or figuratively to
represent what?
A: Darkness.
Black and white have often been used to describe
opposites such as what?
A: Good and evil, the Dark Ages versus Age of Enlightenment, and night
versus day.
Since the Middle Ages, black has been the symbolic
color of what?
A: Solemnity and authority, and for this reason it is still commonly worn by
judges and magistrates.
Black was one of the first colors used by artists in
what?
A: Neolithic cave paintings.
It was used in ancient Egypt and Greece as the color of
what?
A: The underworld.
In the Roman Empire, it became the color of mourning,
and over the centuries it was frequently associated with what?
A: Death, evil, witches, and magic.
In the 14th century, it was worn by whom?
A: Royalty, clergy, judges, and government officials in much of Europe.
According to surveys in Europe and
North America, it is
the color most associated with what?
A: Mourning, the end, secrets, magic, force, violence, evil and elegance.
Black is the most common ink color used for what?
A: Printing books, newspapers, and documents, as it provides the highest
contrast with white paper and thus is the easiest color to read.
Similarly, black text on a white screen is the most
common format used on what?
A: Computer screens.
As of September 2019, the darkest material is made by
MIT engineers from what?
A: Vertically aligned carbon nanotubes.
Old High German had what two words for black?
A: Swartz for dull black and Blach for a luminous black.
Swart still survives as what word?
A: The word swarthy, while blaek became the modern English black.
Black was one of the first colors used in what?
A: Art.
The Lascaux Cave in France contains drawings of bulls
and other animals drawn by paleolithic artists between 18,000 and 17,000
years ago was begun using what?
A: Charcoal, and later achieved darker pigments by burning bones or grinding
a powder of manganese oxide.
For the ancient Egyptians, black had what kind of
positive associations?
A: It was the color of fertility and the rich black soil
flooded by the
Nile.
It was the color of Anubis, the god of the underworld,
who took the form of a what?
A: A black jackal and offered protection against evil to the dead.
To ancient Greeks, black represented what?
A: The underworld, separated from the living by the
river Acheron, whose
water ran black.