Colors in the Dark

I got home from lab late last night and my roommate had already gone to sleep. I didn't want to disturb him so I didn't turn any lights on. My eyes had adjusted to the dark and there was just enough light from the street lamp beaming through our blinds that I could make out shapes and figures to avoid crashing into anything in my apartment, but as I passed the mirror on my way to bed I noticed something strange. I was wearing a Full Sail t-shirt that had orange lettering on it and I was able to see that the letters were in fact orange. I knew this was impossible. I shouldn't be able to see colors in such darkness. I had just learned about this in lecture. But there before my eyes I could see the letters on my shirt in orange. I looked around my room and I was able to see a couple of other things in color such as the red on one of my jackets, the yellow paper on a legal pad, and the blue of an ethernet cable. However most things appeared in black and white or shades of grey as they should. I looked at some of the posters on my wall, but no matter how hard I looked at them I couldn't determine their color. I looked at the orange letters on my shirt again and I figured that since I knew the letters on my shirt were orange my brain must have been filling in the colors, and it was doing this for other things that I knew had a specific color. Obviously I can't remember the color of every object so my brain can't fill in every color. I want to do an experiment to see how well I can see colors in the dark.

Stairwell Sidelight

The outside stairwell walls of my apartment are plain and not particularly noteworthy, but closer inspection reveals that the stucco has a random textured feel, and the white paint seems to shout out every smudge and mark. However what caught my eye was the way the stairwell lights affect the appearance of these walls. The lights mounted onto the wall sidelight the stucco casting long shadows along the wall. These dark ripples make the wall look old, worn, and even dirtier; but the light shines directly onto the wall opposite the stair and there are almost no shadows. The bright light seems to erase the marks and smudges and the white wall looks almost clean.