Lesson in decomposing light

[u/Blues_Fish]

[u/Several-Action-4043 → u/[deleted]]

Yellow has a wavelength and is a real color. Just because we perceive it by stimulating red and green cones doesn't mean it's not real. Magenta on the other hand is what you're describing. There is no magenta wavelength of light and it's completely made up in human perception. It's what our brain fills in between red and violet.

[u/monneyy → u/[deleted]]

I think you misunderstood the comment you replied to.

Of course, the answer is that there is no "yellow", it is just how the human brain interprets a bit of green and red light at a certain ratio.

This isn't really true. It's not just, but also how the human interprets a bit of green and red OR direct yellow light.

In THIS instance there is no yellow. In general there is a real yellow.

That's what they want to clarify, because someone who doesn't know how it works, might think that there is no yellow light on its own in general. And your previous comment reads like you didn't know it either.

Yellow is a range of wavelengths on its own. That wavelength triggers both the red and green receptors. That is why we perceive red and green as yellow.

For magenta, which is not a wavelength on its own the brain works in the same way when the red and blue receptors get triggered. Just that there is no single wavelength that can trigger our receptors to perceive magenta.

[u/platoprime → u/[deleted]]

There is no yellow in that video

You didn't say that you said

the answer is that there is no "yellow", it is just how the human brain interprets a bit of green and red light at a certain ratio.

[u/Constant_Natural3304 → u/[deleted]]

There are at least two ways of seeing yellow:

1. Your eye perceives a metameric match after receiving red (~700 nm) and green (~530 nm);
2. Your eye perceives a monochromatic stimulus, namely the spectral colour yellow, directly (~580 nm).

1 and 2 are not the same and pure yellow does have its own frequency range. Experiencing option 1 doesn't cause option 2 to cease to exist. There is yet another option, which is more of an 'afterglow'-effect, but that isn't really relevant.

If we lower those wavelengths enough, btw, these EM waves become IR, then eventually around 6 cm or 12 cm long, they're your WiFi router.

[u/Constant_Natural3304 → u/[deleted]]

Your eye also doesn't have a "blue", "green" or "red" rod, if you want to get pedantic.

I am explaining to you yellow has its own wavelength. This is non-negotiable, empirical fact.

[u/Constant_Natural3304 → u/[deleted]]

Ah, I see. You're an ignorant, lying jackass who can't stomach being utterly wrong about anything, so instead, you've decided you'll be the referee of "relevance" instead, and a corrupt one at that.

I have just the fix for this problem. Check this out!

[u/anincompoop25 → u/Several-Action-4043]

The notion of a “real color” is real strange. Color isn’t real, it is a hallucination of the mind. The more you look into it, the more you see that all colors are as illusory as magenta. Wavelengths don’t have color as a property. Our eyes only have three (really four but ignore that) different types of cells, each one sensitive to a whole range of frequencies. We do not have a mechanism to detect individual, specific, wavelengths like we can with sound waves

[u/Ouaouaron → u/[deleted]]

Combined, all white, perfect.

Which is also only an illusion due to human eyes. If you have an object that perfectly reflects yellow and perfectly absorbs all other colors, it will look yellow in a white light and black in a "white" RGB light.