

What are the limits of human vision? - Hooke
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150727-what-are-the-limits-of-human-vision

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rspeer
I appreciate that this article doesn't over-simplify the color theory -- it
talks about the complete spectrum of visible light and the fact that our cones
preferentially receive short, medium, and long wavelengths.

What I've come to expect from pop science is the "lie-to-children" description
that our cones receive red, green, and blue light, as if only three
wavelengths existed, and as if our eyes were designed to look at computer
monitors instead of the other way around.

~~~
Zikes
But, aren't red, green, and blue just the names we gave to those short,
medium, and long wavelengths?

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jameshart
That's dangerous because it starts you down the road of thinking of colors as
having a wavelength. A color is just the subjective sensation we get because
of different balances of stimulation between our short, medium and long wave
cones. Light of a specific frequency creates a specific color response, but it
doesn't _uniquely_ generate that response. The sensation of 'yellow' can be
generated with light at a wavelength somewhere between medium and long, or
light at both medium and long wavelengths with a gap between, or light with a
broad spread of wavelengths from medium to long (just so long as there's not
much short wave light in the mix). And there's no such thing as a 'purple'
wavelength. You see purple when your long and short wavelength cones are
stimulated, but the medium ones aren't, and that can't be accomplished with a
single, narrow wavelength - only by a mixture of long and short wave light.

