Seeing Colors

Science & Environmental Education, STEM, Brain, Nature of Science, History of Science

Ed Hessler

BBC's Being Human series has a new addition in Reel  - Science. There we are asked take a look at a rainbow. When we do we see a full spectrum of visible light (Count the colors and name them, if you'd like.). But there is an exception: magenta.

It doesn't exist because there is no wavelength for the color. This means that the brain makes up the difference but how?  This is the subject of the 4 m 09 s video, shall we say, colorful report.

Emory University's Arts on the Brain not only has an explanation - the approach the two explanations take are different - but also a gallery of all the imaginary colors "that you can see, and the colors needed to see them." It also draws attention to criticism about the possibility in the first place. The argument is that "these are just intermediary colors between two eye structures -  color cones"(explained in the text).