Today I Learned: Pink Isn’t A Real ColorsteemCreated with Sketch.

in #til7 years ago


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What?! Yeah, I know. It’s all one big lie, played on each and every one of us by our own bodies. Let’s take a look at the color spectrum:


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Do you see any pink in there? No? That’s because it’s not a color of the visible spectrum. (Though you can search on the internet and find people who display the color indigo as pink… which doesn’t make any sense as it’s in between blue and violet. For this to make any sense at all we should probably briefly discuss how we perceive color to begin with, because when I look at something pink it certainly looks like a color to me! (and right now you’re thinking… yeah looks like a color to you because you’re an IDIOT @justtryme90 LOLLOLOLOLOL).

Perception of Color

When you look at something, you are observing the light that reflects off of it. If I shined a white light (white because it is the sum of all colors in the visible spectrum) onto say an apple, the apple would absorb much of that light, the light that isn’t absorbed is reflected of which then reaches your eyes. The colors of light that reflect off of that apple can be described in terms of wavelengths between 640 to 760 nm (which are various colors of red) Citaton. Maybe you are looking at a green leaf attached to that apple, well the chlorophyll in that leaf absorbs light and the light that reflects back is why you see that green color. It’s actually interesting to see a plot of what light chlorophyll is absorbing:


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The two types of chlorophyll in leaves look to absorb lots of red and blue colored light, not shockingly all of those wavelengths that aren’t absorbed and reflect back at you are green.

Detection of Color with Your Eyes

So all of that light reflecting off of things and reaching your eyes enters inside through your pupil and strikes cells called cone cells, which come in three flavors (short, medium and long, yes I know those aren’t flavors, deal with it):


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So the graph above is of the wavelengths of light that the cells can perceive, short cone cells see blueish light, medium cone cells see greenish light and long cone cells see redish light, when light strikes these cells they signal to your brain, hey hey I am detecting something here!! Your brain then interprets that signal (based upon its strength) into what we call “color.” You will note that we can only actually perceive three real colors (red, green, blue), but we see a variety of other colors. For instance yellow, it’s a real color of light, but we can’t directly see it, we perceive yellow when both our long (red) cones fire strongly and medium (green) cones fire more weakly the same time (this is because yellow is a wavelength of light just shy of 600 nm, and if you look at that wavelength on the plot above for our cones that’s about the max of the red curve and on the downside of the green curve.)


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If only you were a real color.

So wait… Doesn’t That Mean Pink IS a Color?

Yes, It’s not a REAL color of light, but it is still a color (you can relax now, seeing those pink elephants is totally natural after all!). Pink is actually a compound color, we see it when all three of our cones are firing simultaneously, the long cone must be firing strongly, while at the same time the medium and short cones must be firing just a little bit (aka there is no one wavelength of real light that can make that happen)! It takes a combination of wavelengths of light to activate our eyes in such a way that our brain assembles pink.

Sources:
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-03/metaphysics-color-and-defense-pink
http://www.livescience.com/32559-why-do-we-see-in-color.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_cell

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Thank goodness it's a color. I'd hate to tell my 9 year old daughter that everything she owns is fake.

Hmmm I am so glad you don't have to lie to her...you would probably end up in a coffin somewhere.....LOL!

Lol!!! I see you've read my posts.

hahahahaha :D

At least it would make girls understand they don't need pink everywhere !

That would be a hilarious conversation. "So that bear is fake." "Uh no daddy, it's right here." "Yes but it's not a real color, it's all a lie."

She just shakes her head and walks away thinking daddy is crazy.

Then she attempts to kill me...

Lol, a 9 year old murderer. All because of pink. :D

To be fair, she did warn me...

Oh my god, thats... Hilarious!

Brilliant post. The human visual system has all sorts of tricks that create what we perceive as an image of the world. If you look at the graph there is considerable overlap between the medium and long wave cones and even some with the short wave one. That creates a bit of a "grey" area when it comes to colour perception (pun intended).

Indeed it does, it also means that the stimulation of those cones by different wavelengths can happen with varying intensities, where all three overlap they would all be stimulated very weakly. The brain amazingly interprets all of these varying signals to present the world as we observe. The next question is, does everyone perceive the colors the same way, like is my brains version of RED the same as your brains? Is my Pink the same as your Pink?

That question used to drive me crazy as a kid. I was always trying to come up with an experiment to test but never could do it! It is also a fascinating philosophical question about perception in general:)

It sounds like you were a much more intelligent kid then I was! I was only ever concerned with playing video games and riding my bike... never thought about others perceptions or how their minds worked lol! Making kid me look bad lol!

Lol. I was a weird kid - was more like a miniature adult. Paradoxically I'm more like a kid now so I have aged in reverse in a sense!

I have argued the same thing for years haha!

It's certainly interesting to think about!

Same applies for magenta, brown, beige, etc...

Indeed, those are all also not real colors, but rather mixtures of multiple colors of light :)

So Pink Panther doesn't exist!

Maybe he should be more of a rainbow panther! He's composed of multiple colors of light after all.

First they take away Pluto, and now pink

Its not taken away! Its just ... even more than it appeared!

Well it is the color of passion after all.... (I believe thats a lyric from that song, though I haven't heard it for a long time).

I have a Pink Elephant, That's a real stuffs toy

Yep, real as real can be. Its color on the other hand... not as real. It just allows a couple wavelengths of light to come off it. I suppose in reality its actually multicolored. We just perceive it as pink. The human brain and our eyes are truly fascinating! Thanks for commenting! Appreciate it man!

I see it! I see it! My cones must be firing. Thanks for a very informative TIL post.

I am glad you liked it! You would think that with all my education about light I would have already thought about this, but I honestly had not. It wasn't until a few weeks back when I first saw something about this and put two and two together. :)

yeah ... amazing truth. I also really learned today. thanks for sharing

Thanks for reading, I am glad you liked the post!

At the end of the day, it really depends on how you define what a color is :)

Indeed, I am defining a color as a perception of the mind, however a REAL color is a natural wavelength. :)

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