this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] shneancy@lemmy.world 24 points 4 days ago (15 children)

the heck do you mean purple is not an actual colour??

[–] chuckleslord@lemmy.world 25 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (13 children)

Purple, the color directly between red and blue, is a creation of your mind interpreting a band of light that triggers your red and blue sensing nerves, but no green is sensed. The actual band of light we can see goes from red to green to blue. Purple doesn't fall between those colors, meaning it wouldn't be included in a rainbow, and isn't any "pure" light you could see, since it doesn't fall on the spectrum.

Essentially, any time you see purple, you're seeing two different frequencies of light that your mind interprets as a single frequency.

[–] shneancy@lemmy.world 7 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

ah a similar explanation to why yellow is not an actual colour either

the silly explanation that has no effect on how we perceive, use, or think about colour. sigh why are the people responsible for those studies calling those colours not real? Why not just colours resulting from mixing other colours like the artists have done since the invention of paint?

[–] chuckleslord@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Sorry for the confusion. Yellow is a single wavelength of light. We perceive it with the green and red receptors in our eyes, but it is a single wavelength. Purple isn't a single wavelength, but two that are being interpreted as a color.

That was the distinction I was calling out.

[–] shneancy@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago

and that is why i didn't say the same explanation, but similar

both, in my opinion, suffer from the clickbait disease "YOU CAN'T SEE YELLOW 😱" (directly, because to see it you use two light receptors combined) "PURPLE DOESN'T EXIST 😱" (as a single wavelength colour because as opposed to the other colours of the rainbow it uses a combination of red and blue wavelengths)

i don't blame you for either of course, i'm just expressing my general annoyance with the phrasing of both science facts

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