>> It's more that, in everyday life, there is no way of turning light 
>> into either electricity
> 
> Solar panels.

And when do you *ever* see those in everyday life? ;-)

>> So that's the magic relationship? Those two measurements allow you to 
>> determine the index of refraction?
> 
> Yes, but bear in mind those two properties will likely not be constant 
> over frequency (maybe one of them will be, I don't know).

Yeah, fair enough. This, presumably, is why we also have the index of 
dispersion! :-D

>> Presumably knowing the *colour* of an object still requires you to 
>> compute electron energy band gaps and weird crap like that though?
> 
> Probably, I don't know the details, I just know that for eg car paint 
> there is *a lot* of this sort of research to get colour pigments that 
> don't fade or change colour after 20 years in the sun.  You certainly 
> need to know your chemistry and physics!

Heh. You know, all I was *actually* trying to find out in the first 
place is whether the reflections on a coloured surface are themselves 
coloured.

It seems I get rather side-tracked. Again.

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