What does blue portal and orange portal signify?

I haven't played Portal. Now playing Portal 2 and I'm not quite sure if I understand the mechanism properly. I'm stuck in a floor in the chapter 'The Return'. I'm wondering what does blue and orange portal signify? How to use them properly? So far what I know is if I enter via one portal I'll come out of another one.

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2 Answers

There is no functional difference between the two colours. They are just two ends of the same portal and like you said, if you enter one portal, you will come out of the other. As spencer added in a comment, the colours help you know which portal you have fired. That way you can avoid firing the same portal twice and moving it when you might not want to.

You can't have two blue portals or two orange portals up at the same time. If a test chamber has a pre-opened portal for you somewhere, you can open a portal of the other colour to take advantage of it.

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There's no real symbolism to the colors, it's just the colors Aperture Science uses, just like Atlas and P-Body are blue and orange respectively, the reversible Excursion Funnels, the Portals, the broken Faith Plates, the powered/unpowered cubes, literally anything.