This experiment is designed to test your knowledge of light absorption with regards to paper. Take several sheets of water construction paper. From here, apply a unique dye or color to each piece of paper. After letting it dry, hold it up to the light. If the color in the bottle has presented itself over the entire piece of paper, you have added chemicals to paper that have successfully absorbed light particles. For example, if you have a blue dye that has been successfully applied to a piece of paper, the colors that light particles that have been absorbed by the chemicals are everything in the color spectrum except blue.
While colored pens and inks may appear to absorb all but one color, most inks and pens are actually a blend of several different colors that cannot be absorbed. To separate these out, mark small dots at the bottom of a piece of blotting paper using different colored pens. From here, slowly dip the paper down into a bowl of water, letting it soak for several minutes. As the dots expand, the colors will separate, revealing several colors that the light is unable to absorb.
This experiment will help you test both light and heat absorption with respect to darker and lighter colors. Take two beakers with equal amounts of water in each. From here, fill one with a controlled amount of dark black dye while filling the other with a lighter color. Place them out in the sun for the same amount of time. Take the temperature of both items. You will find the darker water will be warmer because more of the light was absorbed by the liquid.
This light absorption exercise will further test the change in temperature found between darker and lighter colors. Place two equal sized blocks of ice out in the sun. From here, put several dark drops of dye on one ice block followed by several drops of light die on the other block. As the sun melts away the ice, watch to see which block melts down faster. If done correctly, the darker color should melt quicker than the light.