Having a background in sound I am probably coming at this all wrong but if you mix a 1kHz sine wave with a 2kHz sine wave at various amplitudes you will get various different sounding composite sounds but at no point will you be able to emulate say, a 1300Hz sound. How is it that mixing Red Light at 462 terahertz (or whatever) with green light at 545 terahertz (these are numbers I am just pulling off google) at the same amplitude can result in a perceived frequency equivalent to 516 terahertz or as we know it ‘yellow’?
Is it that the ‘yellow’ we experience from Additive colour mixing is not the ‘true’ yellow we see in the rainbow? Is it our eyes that make up the colour based on the input of two discrete light sources interfering with each other?
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Human perception of color is not quite detecting wavelength. Rather, our eyes have three types of color receptor: red, blue, and green. All color that we see is due to light stimulating these receptors to different degrees. For instance, what we see as yellow is a result of stimulating both the red and green receptors. This can be accomplished by combining both red and green light (as is done by a computer screen) or by producing a single wavelength in between which stimulates both receptors (such as the emission lines of sodium). Our eyes can’t tell the difference.
Some colors, such as pink, can only be produced though a mix of wavelengths.
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