system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5 Why does bleach make so many different materials of different chemical compositions lighter even though it presumably interacts with them in distinct ways?

I don't understand how the chemical bleach has the same effect on my navy blue t-shirt as it does on tree bark as it does on red vinyl. Are some chemical properties so simply universal?
gpt
No, it interacts with them all in the same way, depending on the bleach. What bleach generally does is to oxidize (for chlorine based bleaches) or reduce (sulphur dioxide) the chemical bonds of the pigments in whatever you put it on, which has the effect of removing the colour from them. This is the same thing that high-energy photons in sunlight does, but it obviously happens much faster.