It's reflecting, but that's not the color.
According to the physics of light, the reflected light
is the "color" of an object.
Take a ripe red tomato as your example. The Lycopene inside of the tomato absorbs pretty much every wavelength of light except for red, which it reflects. This give the tomato a red appearance.
But looking further, the tomato is actually not red. It
reflects red but red is never an intrinsic characteristic of the tomato. It is actually an intrinsic characteristic of the
light that never actually becomes part of the tomato.
The intrinsic characteristic of the tomato is that it will
absorb all other light
but red light. So in essence, everything
but red becomes a part of the tomato. What is "red" is actually just the light that the tomato reflects. Since we see only the reflected light, we call the tomato "red".
Now apply this to a mirror.
Anything that is in a direct line of sight from a mirror will absorb certain wavelengths along the spectrum and reflect certain other wavelength of light onto that mirror. The mirror then reflects that light back perfectly while absorbing
no light at all.
Since there is no absorption, then there can be no color.
The "color" Silver is simply a "shiny" gray. But a mirror is not gray because it reflects all colors of the spectrum, whereas gray is equal absorption and reflection of all colors of the spectrum. It is between white (total even reflection of all wavelengths) and black (total even absorption of all wavelengths). Gray occurs when X% of all light wavelengths are absorbed evenly and Y% of all light wavelengths are reflected evenly.
A mirror does not have these qualities.
If anything, a mirror might qualify as a pure "white" as it is total reflection of all wavelengths of light.
In essence, this means that a mirror has no color of its own, at least from a physic point of view, but instead it's color would most correctly be classified as "variable".
:mrgreen:
Now, some people might want to know what all of this has to do with gay couples adopting.
From what I can tell, absolutely nothing. Unless gay mirror are not being allowed to adopt. :mrgreen: