How come red & purple are on opposite, far ends of the electromagnetic spectrum, but when mixing colors together in kindergarten, purple is halfway between red & blue?

Question

Shouldn’t common sense dictate that either both be one, or both be the other?

In: 1934

Answer 1

The color “wheel” is basically an optical illusion that results from how the cells in our eyeballs respond to different wavelengths of light and how our brain interprets those signals.

In reality, light is in a linear spectrum that doesn’t wrap around with “red” at one end and “violet” at the other.