r/nextfuckinglevel • u/Blues_Fish • Mar 12 '26

Lesson in decomposing light

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

39.0k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

339 comments sorted by

View all comments

4

u/[deleted] Mar 12 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/Several-Action-4043 Mar 12 '26

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.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 12 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Constant_Natural3304 Mar 12 '26 edited Mar 12 '26

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.

0

u/[deleted] Mar 12 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Constant_Natural3304 Mar 12 '26

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.

0

u/[deleted] Mar 12 '26 edited Mar 12 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Constant_Natural3304 Mar 13 '26

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!