“Impossible” colors

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So I’ve been seeing a lot about these colors that aren’t supposed to exist apparently? Like magenta, stygian blue, etc and I kind of get what’s going on but also kind of don’t? I’ve seen explainations of this on the internet before but never fully understood, so if anyones able to help with that I’d appreciate it. Don’t want a watered down explaination (I like technical stuff), just a more understandable and approachabe one

In: Physics

7 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Let’s think of sound. Imagine a flute. Imagine the flutist plays a single low pitched sustained sound. Can you hear it? Great. Now imagine the flutist plays a single high pitched sustained sound. You’re doing great!

Now it gets tricky! Imagine two flutists, one playing the low pitched sound and one the high pitched sound. The result is NOT a single medium pitched sound, but rather a mishmash of two sounds that couldn’t have been produced with a single flute. You need at least two, and that’s why it’s a secondary sound.

The color magenta is like that. A blue light beam and a red light beam hitting your eyes just right. Just like the two sounds didn’t make a medium sound, the two light beams don’t make a green of yellow light. They make a mishmash color that couldn’t have been produced with a single light beam. The color is called magenta, and because you need at least two light beams to produce it, it is a secondary color!

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