-
Asked by Owen:-) to Andy, Chris, Harriet, Jess, Nikki on 11 Mar 2016.
Question: Why do colours appear as they do
- Keywords:
-
Christopher Blanford answered on 11 Mar 2016:
Owen! Hello!
Two parts: how colours are formed and how we see them.
Colours form when light is absorbed or reflects or emitted by an object. The light is made of particles (photons) that have different energies. Different energies mean different colours. We can see a small range of these particles of light.
Our eyes have colour-detecting cells at the back, on the retina. Most of us have three kinds, which detect the primary colours of light. Some of us are missing one or more. This is colour blindness. Some people (most often women) can detect a fourth colour. Some animals can see colours outside the range from red to blue.
Chris
- Keywords:
-
Nikki D'Arcy answered on 11 Mar 2016:
Thanks for the question!
It’s all to do with how an object reflects light and how our brain processes that. Something will look white when it reflects all wavelengths and black when it absorbs them all.
Red, green and blue make up the colour spectrum and by mixing these colours we can make up all the other colours. The eyes contain many light sensitive cells which can see these reflected wavelenghts of light and pass them to the brain which interprets them as a colour.
I hope that kind of makes sense? Im sure there is a much better explaination!
-
andy chapman answered on 13 Mar 2016:
My two fellow scientists have answered the ‘mechanics’ of seeing colour bit perfectly, nothing to add. I will add though that there is another bit to this – how WE personally interpret colours and that is down to our individual brains. This topic is discussed in a fantastic way in a book i recommend in a previous answer called : through the language glass by Guy Deutscher. There is a lot to consider when I look at the sky and call it ‘blue’ whether someone else experiences exactly the same sensation of ‘blue’ as me…indeed experiments in with different people of different cultures and different languages shows that we don’t. Whats blue for me isn’t necessary blue for everyone else.
-
Jessica Groppi answered on 13 Mar 2016:
Hi,
Colours come from the interaction of light with the molecules that constitute the thing you are looking at and from how such light interacts with the receptors in the eye and then is processed in the brain.
Light is characterised by a fixed amount of energy, when it hits the molecules on the surface of an object, part of the light gets absorbed by the molecules and part it’s reflected. The reflected light has a different energy from the original one and when it reaches the retinas in the eye, it’s converted to an electric impulse that in our brain we perceive as precise color.
Jess.
-
Comments
Owen:-) commented on :
Thxs guys