I don't understand how the visible electromagnetic spectrum starts with red but ends in violet, which is blue and red mixed together
So it starts with red and finishes with half-red.
How is that possible?
How is that possible?
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FrozenWasteland · 61-69, M
It's our brains.
Light isn't really colored. The visible light range is just photons ranging from long wavelength, low energy photons that our eyes and brain perceive as red, to shorter wavelength, higher energy photons that we perceive as violet.
Color processing in humans is weird. We perceive monochromatic light at (say) 590 nm wavelength as yellow, since it stimulates both long and mid-wavelength receptors and that's how our brain interprets the result. However, we'd see exactly the same thing if we looked simultaneously at two light sources, red and green when the red stimulates the long wavelength receptors and the green stimulated the mids (as long as the red/ green brightness ratio was right). Our brains can't tell the difference. We "see" yellow, even there is absolutely no actual yellow (590 nm) light to be found.
That's why if you look really close at a yellow object on a monitor, you see both red and green pixel elements, but no yellow.
So it's just human biology that the two ends on the visible spectrum are, perceptively, somewhat close in color. As long as the observer isn't colorblind.
At least that's how i understand it.
Light isn't really colored. The visible light range is just photons ranging from long wavelength, low energy photons that our eyes and brain perceive as red, to shorter wavelength, higher energy photons that we perceive as violet.
Color processing in humans is weird. We perceive monochromatic light at (say) 590 nm wavelength as yellow, since it stimulates both long and mid-wavelength receptors and that's how our brain interprets the result. However, we'd see exactly the same thing if we looked simultaneously at two light sources, red and green when the red stimulates the long wavelength receptors and the green stimulated the mids (as long as the red/ green brightness ratio was right). Our brains can't tell the difference. We "see" yellow, even there is absolutely no actual yellow (590 nm) light to be found.
That's why if you look really close at a yellow object on a monitor, you see both red and green pixel elements, but no yellow.
So it's just human biology that the two ends on the visible spectrum are, perceptively, somewhat close in color. As long as the observer isn't colorblind.
At least that's how i understand it.