What’s a color? (1st part)
We live surrounded by colors. We can see them on flowers, in the rainbow,
on the screens, on mode trends… but what are they?
The color is a result of the light hitting matter. That’s what those
physicians that work in Optic tell us. And that that light, through our eyes, raises
an alarm in our brain.
Newton confirmed that light is the source of all colors, his merit was
causing a rainbow and converting it in white light. Light is a type of energy
that moves in transversal waves, which go from 390 to 760 nanometers. For
example, the waves that cause red measure between 680 and 760 nanometers, while
those of violet from 390 to 450 nanometers. Human eye doesn’t perceive anything
beyond that range of waves: neither the ultraviolet light nor the infrared
radiation nor X-rays.
Colors are part of the light and in light all colors are hidden. Who
uses the light-colors? We’ve got them in all the screens we use every day: the
one of the TV, of the PC, phones and tablets… But that’s only one aspect of
this phenomena.
There is this called “reflection”-“absortion” of light, which consists
in pigments reflecting
or absorbing light in different manners depending on their molecular structure,
for instance: white pigments reflect all the white light, red reflects the wave
range that corresponds to red and absorbs the rest, while black absorbs them
all, reflecting no light. We can differentiate up to 200 different tones, 26
grades of saturation and up to 500 grades of luminosity.
The eyes are the organs through which we experience color. Without
them, there is no color. The light activates the “cones”, which are color photoreceptor cells found in the eye’s fovea, which send the
information to the brain through the optical nerves. Each eye sends an image to
the brain, that’s why we can still see with only one of them.
These 2 images can be processed in different ways. A recently born
baby has only a blurred sight, but promptly, by comparisions, repetitions and
associations, the baby will start to interpret little by little the world around, and a bit later,
to name all those colorful sensations.
To be continued next week.
To be continued next week.
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