Re: Does black have properties that make it cool off faster than other colors?

Yes. The same factors which cause black objects to absorb radiation better than white ones work in the other direction: they cause black objects to radiate away heat better, too. You can check this by looking up two different properties of materials. The albedo measures how much of the light striking a surface bounces off it. For example, a chair with an albedo of 0.20 reflects 20 percent of the incident light. That means that the remainder, 80 percent, must be absorbed. The other property, emissivity, describes how well the object emits radiation. Physicists call an ideal (unphysical) object which absorbs and emits perfectly a "blackbody". The emissivity of an object is the ratio of how much energy it emits at some given temperature to the amount of energy a perfect blackbody would emit at the same temperature. An emissivity value of 1.0 means that the object emits just as much as a perfect blackbody -- which is not realistic.

You can find values of emissivity for common materials in many websites. Just go to google.com and type "emissivity" into the search bar. For example, I found this nice list of emissivities:

http://www.electro-optical.com/bb_rad/emissivity/matlemisivty.htm

It's a bit harder to find a list of the albedos of materials; the best I can do is point to one for roofing products:

http://www.fsec.ucf.edu/bldg/pubs/cr670/

Keep in mind that both albedo and emissivity can change with wavelength. A red object, for example, reflects lots of red light, but not much blue light. That means it has a larger albedo at long visible wavelengths than at short visible wavelengths.

If you want to test the connection between color and cooling, try this experiment. Find a set of coffee mugs which are as similar as possible except for their colors: two or three whitish mugs and two or three blackish mugs. Put them all into a big pot of cool water and heat it gently on a stove until the water is almost boiling. Use a pair of tongs to remove the mugs from the water, pouring out any water from the mugs so that they are all empty. Place all the hot mugs onto a thick wad of newspaper in a closed room -- keep them away from open windows and other sources of drafts. Check the mugs every few minutes to see which ones are still hot. If the automobile worker and I are correct, then the black ones should cool off most quickly.

Try it!