I don't know how much of this you already know, but here goes: Carbon fiber is often made by stretching polymer strings in a controlled-atmosphere chamber and then very delicately oxidising them, taking out all the stuff that isn't carbon, and leaving what is pretty much a single chain of carbon behind: coking strings.
Pigments, dyes, everything else, are a result of absorption of photons by electrons in bonds, so the color is a function of the bond energy. Most everything absorbs IR, but in the visual range the best organic dyes are the result of alternating single and double bonds, spread over fairly large structures. Because of the way electron bonds work, you get a sort of even distribution of electrons across the whole structure. That gives you a nice pure color. Blacks and browns are what happen when you have a mishmash of electron bonds, each absorbing at a different frequency: a heterogenous mixture of stuff.
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Carbon fiber is often made by stretching polymer strings in a controlled-atmosphere chamber and then very delicately oxidising them, taking out all the stuff that isn't carbon, and leaving what is pretty much a single chain of carbon behind: coking strings.
Pigments, dyes, everything else, are a result of absorption of photons by electrons in bonds, so the color is a function of the bond energy. Most everything absorbs IR, but in the visual range the best organic dyes are the result of alternating single and double bonds, spread over fairly large structures. Because of the way electron bonds work, you get a sort of even distribution of electrons across the whole structure. That gives you a nice pure color. Blacks and browns are what happen when you have a mishmash of electron bonds, each absorbing at a different frequency: a heterogenous mixture of stuff.
I love the paint explosion.