

Need a Creative Boost? Find the Blue Room. - joshwa
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/science/06color.html?hp

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davi
The only sentence in the article* that quantifies the magnitude of a color
dependent effect is:

 _And while red guests reported feeling hungry and thirsty, yellow guests ate
twice as much._

This is a pattern in science journalism:

1) scientists show statistically significant effect (sometimes minuscule in
magnitude)

2) science writers describe the sign of the result without magnitude, and get
some 'experts' to pontificate

3) public worries/speculates/exclaims about some new factor to think about in
daily life

Yadda yadda.

[edit: *only sentence I saw after skimming ]

~~~
joe_adk
It worked! I worried/speculated/exclaimed, "I guess thats why McDs is all reds
and yellows."

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electromagnetic
I'm currently in a blue room, however I don't necessarily feel anymore
creative than usual. I used to write in a red room and I notice no appreciable
difference in attention span, creativity or anything. In fact my best
concentration (how efficiently I completed a project) was best when I was
actually in a yellow room.

I do use a program called darkroom for typing, it allows you to change
background color and font color easily. I usually use the old school neon-
green on black, however I think I might try the equally old white on blue
before a white on red and see if there's actually an effect.

I do prefer the green on black. However, the white on blue feels quite
comforting when I look at it and white on red gives me a strange tingling at
my forehead, which kind of disconcerts me for staring into it for hours on
end.

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indiejade
Speaking of paint.

Yellow pigment is not the same as yellow light; nor is red pigment the same as
red light; nor is blue pigment the same as blue light. :)

The light-oriented color names are fancier. (cyan, magenta, etc.)

Probably one of the most valuable things I learned as a physics student in
high school!

~~~
blasdel
You've got the pigments and light wavelengths swapped.

(cyan, magenta, yellow, black) form a set of additive (pigment) colors.

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ALee
Here's a copy of the actual report. I think the authors actually describe the
color significance in the report.

<http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1169144>

