Question

Why are the houses in Rajasthan painted white?

Answer 1

We mostly wear light colored clothes in the summer season so that our body does not heat up too much and so we avoid dark color clothes which absorb a lot of heat energy. The white color does not absorb most of the rays in the electromagnetic spectrum.

Complete answer:
We know that the presence of desert and closeness of Tropic of Cancer makes Rajasthan a very hot state compared to the other states. To avoid the heat, most of the houses in Rajasthan are painted white.

As we know the white color is a reflector of heat. When the sunlight falls on the painted walls of the house, most of the light gets reflected back to the atmosphere and very less heat enters the room. This helps in keeping the temperature of the room as cool as possible. If other dark colors are used instead of white colors, the dark colors instead by reflecting the sunlight, absorbs the sunlight.

Additional Information:
Reflection is the change in direction of the wave front at the interface between two different mediums so that the wave front returns into the medium from which it originated. The color a person perceives indicates the wave of light being reflected white spectrum, so when the color white is being reflected that means all wavelengths are being reflected. A wave front is a surface over which an optical wave has a constant phase. For example, a wave front could be the surface over which the wave has a maximum (the crest of a water wave) or a minimum value (the trough of the same wave). Wave fronts can be of three types’ spherical wave front, cylindrical wave front and plane wave front.

Note: Unlike Rajasthan, if we talk about the cold places, the houses should be painted with dark colors so that in the daytime a larger portion of the heat is being absorbed by the walls. The solar cooker works on this principle. If we keep the scientific reason aside, the white color is the first choice of people to paint the exterior.