why does a noise texture multiplied by 1 turn black and white?

Question

I am trying to follow a Tutorial about distortion. I don't understand why a math node (multiply) turns a noise texture, which gives me RGB values, into black and white ones. From my understanding, every RGB value is a vector, for instance (3,2,5). If I multiply it by 1, shouldn't it stay all the same? Can someone explain what's going on in the backend?

"Every RGB value is a vector, for instance (3,2,5). If I multiply it by 1, shouldn't it stay all the same?" No, to stay the same you should multiply the vector by a vector as well, otherwise it is converted to a float. — Duarte Farrajota Ramos, Aug 10 '22 at 10:23
@DuarteFarrajotaRamos I see so the vector is a float now and a float equals black and white values? Is this correct? Thank you! — user123511, Aug 10 '22 at 10:43
Yes that is correct. Check the Vector Math nodes instead to keep color information — Duarte Farrajota Ramos, Aug 10 '22 at 10:46
As @DuarteFarrajotaRamos says, to multiply a vector you cannot use a simple Math node, you need a Vector Math node. With that you have two main options for multiplying the color: either Multiply, where you can enter different values for R, G and B channels, or if you want them to change uniformly there's no need for entering three values, uniform multiplying is achieved by using the Scale option, where a single float is multiplied to all three channels. — Gordon Brinkmann, Aug 10 '22 at 11:03
Related: What happens when a vector is fed into a value slot of the add node? — Markus von Broady, Oct 19 '22 at 10:12

why does a noise texture multiplied by 1 turn black and white?

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