what does that really mean? does it just mean that people tend to call a wider part of the spectrum "green" than they do "red" or "blue"?
how are there "more shades of green than any other color"?
- Thread starter dpopiz
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i guess i could see how it has more shades than yellow or blue, but i dont get how it has more shades than any other color that is a product of two or more colors
there's only so many wavelengths of green so no, can't be infinite.
Green is in the middle of the visible light specturm and I would reckon contains the most wavelengths.
That would be my reasoning anyway, not really sure.
I think that technically there's is an infinite number of shades of every color, but our eyes are more sensitive to light in the green spectrum so we see more shades of green than anything else.
The human eye is more sensitive to green than any other color, which means that you can distinguish more different shades of green than say red or blue. I'm guessing that's what it means.
visible light has a limited spectrum, but there are infinitely many wavelengths that light can take within that spectrum AFAIK.
well there are the specific frequencies to visible light and frequency and wavelenght are related to the constant speed of light.
but then again its been 12 years since I took physics for engineers.
The general color ranges are:
<450nm = violet
450 to 500 nm = blue
500 to 570 nm = green
570 to 590 nm = yellow
590 to 620 nm = orange
>620nm = red
Within the green range, you can have an infinite number of wavelengths (or infinite "shades of green"). But the same is true for any other color.
according to this link...
http://mediatheek.thinkquest.nl/~ll122/en/sp-visible.shtml
"The cones sensitive to red are actually more sensitive to the same intensity light as the green and blue cones, so we tend to see reds better than blues. Actually, the maximum sensitivity of our eyes is in the yellow (which is a mixture of green and red energies), probably because we have evolved on a planet which is bathed in yellow sunlight."
the plot thickens.
Parents use to tell me that looking at green things like leaves helps your vision, is this true? :Q
The "colour" of light is dependant on it's wavelenth which is finite not infinite, it's dependant on the speed of light and the frequency (again which is limited)
I'm gonna have to disagree and say I believe that since the speed of light is constant you can only have whole frequencies (not 5498999.4 Hz) and as such the wavelengths are bound by the constant c.
But it looks like the green spectum does have the most wavelenghts/frequencies?
we could do the math with c=d*f if there are hardfast definitions for the range of visible colors (which one would think there HAS to be.) From there we could figure out the frequency range of each color and decide if green does indeed have the most shades.
He copied my answer, I am the winnar!
spidey07, you're remembering the formula speed of light = frequency*wavelength, which says nothing about the distribution of allowable frequencues within a portion of the spectrum. All frequencues are allowable AFAIK, unless there is some quantum mechanical reason why some frequencues shouldn't be allowable
This link has graph of the sensitivity for each color, and for the rods themselves, which is peaked in the green-yellow region. Also, if you look at the intensity curves for each color, green has a wider curve than red or blue, which I would guess also contributes to being able to see more shades of green.
We posted at the same time.Originally posted by: RaynorWolfcastle
He copied my answer, I am the winnar!
spidey07, you're remembering the formula speed of light = frequency*wavelength, which says nothing about the distribution of allowable frequencues within a portion of the spectrum. All frequencues are allowable AFAIK, unless there is some quantum mechanical reason why some frequencues shouldn't be allowable
Now that I think about it, a continuous distribution may not be allowed because energy is quantized by h. You would still have an extremely large number of possible frequencies as h is so small, but it may not be infinite.
arghh, now I really want to get to the bottom of this. That graph in that link is talking about the sensivitivity of rods which is greyshades with respect to wavelength -
cones are for color, so I don't think we have a hard answer yet.
btw - awesome link.
Its actually a lot more complex than that. What your brain perceives has as much to do with the specific wavelengths as it has to do with the level of overall light.
For ex. the level of light of what we perceive as bright white indoors could be perceived as deep black outdoors. There is something like 20,000 more light on a bright sunny day than what comes from an incandescent bulb.
This of course also applies to color perception as well. What you would see as green indoors would be the same as brown outdoors, due to the level of light reflected. Its a little wacky, and hard to explain, but our perception professor made it a thing to be very clear about how your cones are sensitive to wavelengths of light, not specific colors.
Its def not engineering, that can be broken up into specific shades. Its completely continuous and fuzzy, not concrete and discrete.
Originally posted by: Heisenberg
We posted at the same time.Originally posted by: RaynorWolfcastle
He copied my answer, I am the winnar!
spidey07, you're remembering the formula speed of light = frequency*wavelength, which says nothing about the distribution of allowable frequencues within a portion of the spectrum. All frequencues are allowable AFAIK, unless there is some quantum mechanical reason why some frequencues shouldn't be allowable
Now that I think about it, a continuous distribution may not be allowed because energy is quantized by h. You would still have an extremely large number of possible frequencies as h is so small, but it may not be infinite.
heh, with a username like that you had BETTER post the exact number of frequencies in the the visible spectrum by ROYGBIV.
:beer:
So this question can be broken into two very different ones...
"Do we perceive more shades of green?"
and
"does green have the most shades, from an EM perspective disregarding the human eye?"
I would argue that there are probably "an infinate shades fo every color" for the same reason if you keep getting 50% closer to a object you will never get there. It's the same principal as limits in calculus, there is no exact value to reach you can keep adding more decimals. However because of te sensitivity of the eye as well as processing power of the brain I could see the human body setting limits of the number of colors you can see.
Somewhat. A lot happens to the "signal" between the time it hits your retina to the time you actually PERCEIVE it. Perception is a very, very different thing from sensation.
But green is not something that exists outside of the human brain/eye. Its something our brain/eyes create, to sense the world with. There is no "green" in physical reality, just wavelengths of light that our brain perceive as green.
But that being said, the brain is absolutely more sensitive to green. It has to be, if it wants to pick out things through trees and grass.
Wish I didnt sell my textbook.
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