Why do car headlights look different colors?
You've probably noticed it on a dark road: some cars glow warm yellow, others beam crisp white, and a few flash an icy blue that looks almost alien. They're all just headlights, all doing the same job — lighting the road ahead — so why don't they all look the same color?
The answer is buried inside the bulb. Every headlight makes light by heating something up or exciting tiny particles, and the color you see depends on exactly how that light gets made. Old-school headlights used a thin tungsten wire — the same metal in old-timey light bulbs — and when electricity zapped through it, the wire got white-hot and glowed. But tungsten doesn't glow pure white. It glows warm, like a campfire, which is why those classic headlights look yellowish-orange.
