Professor Askew has a pair of \"ruby-optic\" binoculars, meaning that the regula

Question

Professor Askew has a pair of "ruby-optic" binoculars, meaning that the regular lenses of the binoculars have a thin film coating of some material (probably NOT actually ruby) on top of the glass. When exposed to full spectrum light, the light reflected is a beautiful red color. While this looks really cool, it's actually pretty poor for bird watching (which is why he owns them in the first place), where one would like to see bright vibrant colors of plumage. Why doesn't this work well? What does it mean for the reflected light off of the film/lenses to appear red?

Explanation / Answer

When exposed to light, colored objects reflect only some of the wavelengths and absorb the others. If a red ball appears red, it is because it absorbs all the other wavelengths except red.

Here the thin film coating of the binocular lense absorbs all the wavelength except red. So, it is good only for the shade of red colors a bird has, rest of the colors will look black.

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