Common question: *“Why do you say that yellow, green, and blue make white? I thought the cones were sensitive to RED, green, and blue.”* For pretty much any color - including white - there are lots of different combinations of wavelengths that make us see that color. The only reason red, green, and blue (RGB) is special is that, due to what our cones’ sensitivity graphs happen to be, those three wavelengths can be combined in different amounts to make us see basically _any_ color, while other combinations of wavelengths can only make some colors but not others. Because RGB has that nice property, those are the wavelengths that we like to use on our screens, since they let us see as many colors as possible. Why is it that RGB lets us create more colors than other combination of wavelengths? Let’s consider what it means for our screens to be able to display any color. Every combination of cone reactions makes us see a different color. So, for our screens to display as many colors as possible, they should be able to make our cones react in any combination we want. This means controlling our cones’ reactions independently: we should be able to control how much one type of cone reacts without messing with the other ones. To do this, we want to choose three wavelengths of light: one to control how much the L cones react, one to control the M cones, and one to control the S cones. We might think to use yellow light to control the L cones, since L cones are most sensitive to yellow. However, this would not work well, because M cones are also sensitive to yellow light - by varying the amount of yellow light, we would be controlling both at once. So, we use red instead: since L cones are sensitive to red light but the other cones aren’t, red light lets us control _just_ the L cones and not the others. Similarly, green light (at least a certain wavelength of it) lets us control just the M cones, and blue light lets us control just the S cones. So, by varying the amounts of red, green, and blue light, we can make the cones react in basically any way we want, letting us create basically any color we want. Because we often use red, green, and blue to control our cones’ reactions, people sometimes refer to the L, M, and S cones as the “red, green, and blue cones,” but this is misleading: each type of cone is sensitive to a range of wavelengths, not just one. So, while RGB happens to be the most versatile combination of wavelengths, it’s not the only way to make colors. Yellow, green, and blue does indeed make white, because it makes each cone react a lot. (I once confirmed this by putting a yellow, a green, and a blue LED next to each other, and together they did make white.) You could even get white with just two wavelengths - a lot of yellowish-green to activate both L and M, plus some blue to activate S. I chose to name yellow, green, and blue in the video, rather than RGB, because (1) if you haven’t heard of the RGB system, it would probably make the most sense if I used the wavelength each cone is most sensitive to, and (2) if you _are_ familiar with RGB, using this combination could help demonstrate that RGB is not the only way to make colors. *What about violet/purple?* At 2:31, I mention that L cones are slightly sensitive to the shortest wavelengths of visible light. This little bump of sensitivity is what makes violet different from blue. While all the shorter wavelengths activate the S cone, the very shortest visible wavelengths _also_ activate the L cone a bit, and this L + S combination makes us see violet instead of blue. However, violet is still pretty blue; there are a lot of purples that are redder than this. These more purple-y purples cannot be created by a single wavelength; instead, they require one wavelength to activate the S cones and another one to activate the L cones. Because most purples cannot be made with a single wavelength, you might hear people say that “there is no purple light,” or maybe even more extreme things like “purple does not exist.” It is true that most shades of purple cannot be made from a single wavelength of light, so in that sense there is no purple light - but purple (and magenta, and pink) are still just as valid colors as any other.
except the light entering the eye only has wavelength - not colour. to say "blue light" is wrong, light only has a _value_ in the universe, it gets _colour_ from the brain, this is why we can't tell if MY "red" is the same "red" that YOU see.
@@HarryNicNicholas Yeah, that’s true, and I tried to build up to that idea at the end of the video. I’m essentially using e.g. “blue light” as short for “light of a wavelength that we would perceive as blue if only that wavelength entered our eye,” but being exact in this way would probably make the video harder to understand.
@@CalderRuhlHansen thanks for the reply, yes it would be hard to take in but i think it's important to be accurate, and this is a topic that has literally no exposure, there is only one video that describes the actual process, so if you have time...what i am now intrigued to find out is how data is carried from the retina to the image making part of the brain, neurons transmit information by ionising sodium / potassium, but how does wavelength info (or any info, smell, hearing) get carried? the process has to be the same for all the senses and the brain must sort this info...but how does wavelength data get to the image making part of the brain?
@@HarryNicNicholas Nice physics clarification, but for the purposes of this video, it sounds a little like splitting hairs. With all due respect to you.
@@HarryNicNicholas Great question. The fact that we still have humans with varying degrees of color blindness, that it has been demonstrated that many people can actually differentiate shades of color that other people can't, that (maybe all) documented cultures in the world started developing words for different colors at different stages in history, attest to how delicate and fine-tuned that process must be in our brains.
finally, the answer to dispel my nagging hypothesis regarding what i deemed a misnomer in referring to the "visible" spectrum based on the, apparently incorrect information, that our color perception is activated by only red, green, or blue wavelengths.
Thank you for your wonderful video. I've seen a funny video about that saying, "purple doesn't exist", which was very scientific but still didn't reach your level of clarity. I'm more certain now that the world around us is an illusion created by our brain. The fact that said illusion is widely shared (to the point that I'm sure most humans will agree that the laptop I'm typing on is black with white letters painted on the keys, and that grass is green and girls are pretty) sounds reassuring, but somehow more misleading.
I know this comment is 3 years old, but… I added an explanation of purple light to the pinned comment on the top. I would have wanted to talk about purple in the video, but I made it for a competition with a 5-minute time limit. (I might have also responded to this comment with an explanation at some point, but that comment got deleted when I migrated this video to a different account.)
color in general? I think so! looking into things like Synesthesia...or how much color deficiency prescriptions vary?!...OH HECK YEA.. its like asking u to describe your sense/the sense sight to a lifelong blind person... but your colorblind and farsighted lol 🤦🏽♀🤦🏽♀🤣🤣My color deficient denying grandmother 😂😂 has been interchanging blue & brown clothing to make "matching" outfits fo 1000 years & when i tell you im 36 now & THE LEVELS at which |this shirt works & that one doesnt" FREAKIN VARY. WILDLY. they have kid videos where the game is to look at a panel of varying shades side by side and find the darker/lighter one.. we fight about colors in this house & OFTEN 😂😂
Hello! I do believe it's beacause the material it is made. Must be something with the fact that, for example, fruits with same colors have, in general, similar types of nutrients. Hope I helped somehow!
@@jessikacaroline72 so if i dye a jacket blue and a jacket red, it still has exactly the same material, just different dye, it absorbs completely different frequencies?
Sooo, color doesn't exist and it's only a visual representation of reflected wavelengths. I wonder what causes some objects to reflect/absorb certain frequencies. And are we able to see color in photos and movies for the same reason we can hear recorded audio? which is a frequency within itself
Oops, my old answer got deleted when I migrated my videos to this account. I added an explanation for this and similar questions in the pinned comment.
Great video, +1 LIKE. Anyway, I think you got one thing wrong. Pink light is not R a lot and G, B a little. It would still be red. PINK is fascinating because it is R + B, a lot but without G. It means, it pink exists only in our brain because it's not in one place in the spectrum. It binds our perception of long and short waves, that's why we can draw color CIRCLE. Pink is the glue between red and blue. :)
There are many colors that get called "pink". One version of pink is certainly red plus white, so there is nothing wrong with his explanation. The pink @tix is describing is simply a bluer version of pink.
Re-adding a comment here since my old one got deleted - As John says, there are a lot of colors that we call “pink,” and the one in the video and the bluer type you mention both count. The reason I described the pink I did is that I think people are accustomed to thinking of pink as red plus white, so I thought it would make the most sense if I described a pink made essentially from red plus white.
They’re most sensitive to yellow. However, they are the only cones that are (significantly) sensitive to red, so they are mainly what gets activated when you see red.
Nice video, I just dont get why you used trough the video the right Red Green and Blue as the colours that form white, but the switch to Yellow at the end, which is wrong, mixing Red Green and Yellow you dont get white
@@CalderRuhlHansen wow... Thanks for giving me such a Nice answer... Although in the case of using YGB am I correct in assuming that you have to use a dimmer Green light? because the yellow light will activate green cones much more than red light, so with the same amount of green and blue light I would assume you get a greenish white colour?
(I had previously given an answer here, but it got deleted when I migrated accounts) I believe it is true that, if you are using YGB (yellow, green, and blue) to make white, you’ll need a dimmer green light, to make up for the fact that the yellow is already partially activating the M cones.
I really haven’t get why you said Y G B make white instead of RGB cause I'm not a native English speaker. So can you explain that in simple English please? Note: I've commented this after reading your pinned comment
Sure, I will do my best! There are many ways to make white. Both RGB and YGB make white. RGB makes all three types of cones react a lot, so we see white. YGB also makes all three types of cones react a lot, so we see white. Why do both RGB and YGB make all three types of cones react a lot? Here is why: - The “S” cone reacts to Blue light. When there is RGB or YGB, there is Blue light, and the “S” cone reacts to that. - The “M” cone reacts to Green light. When there is RGB or YGB, there is Green light, and the “M” cone reacts to that. - The “L” cone reacts to Red light and _also_ to Yellow light. When there is RGB, there is Red light, and the “L” cone reacts to that. When there is YGB, there is Yellow light, and the “L” cone reacts to that. So, there can be either Red or Yellow, and the “L” cone will react. So, both RGB and YGB make all three types of cones (L, M, and S) react. The most important idea is this: each cone reacts to many different types of light. So, there are many different ways to make a cone react. And so, there are many different types of light that make us see the same color. Did that make sense?
I just wrote an explanation for this in the pinned comment at the top, since a lot of people have asked about it. Let me know if anything in it doesn’t make sense!
When explaining how the brain perceives color, it does not make sense to refer to "red light" or "yellow light" since color is not a property of light, and you're including the thing you're trying to explain, color, in the explanation of color.
Common question: *“Why do you say that yellow, green, and blue make white? I thought the cones were sensitive to RED, green, and blue.”*
For pretty much any color - including white - there are lots of different combinations of wavelengths that make us see that color. The only reason red, green, and blue (RGB) is special is that, due to what our cones’ sensitivity graphs happen to be, those three wavelengths can be combined in different amounts to make us see basically _any_ color, while other combinations of wavelengths can only make some colors but not others. Because RGB has that nice property, those are the wavelengths that we like to use on our screens, since they let us see as many colors as possible.
Why is it that RGB lets us create more colors than other combination of wavelengths? Let’s consider what it means for our screens to be able to display any color. Every combination of cone reactions makes us see a different color. So, for our screens to display as many colors as possible, they should be able to make our cones react in any combination we want. This means controlling our cones’ reactions independently: we should be able to control how much one type of cone reacts without messing with the other ones. To do this, we want to choose three wavelengths of light: one to control how much the L cones react, one to control the M cones, and one to control the S cones.
We might think to use yellow light to control the L cones, since L cones are most sensitive to yellow. However, this would not work well, because M cones are also sensitive to yellow light - by varying the amount of yellow light, we would be controlling both at once. So, we use red instead: since L cones are sensitive to red light but the other cones aren’t, red light lets us control _just_ the L cones and not the others. Similarly, green light (at least a certain wavelength of it) lets us control just the M cones, and blue light lets us control just the S cones. So, by varying the amounts of red, green, and blue light, we can make the cones react in basically any way we want, letting us create basically any color we want.
Because we often use red, green, and blue to control our cones’ reactions, people sometimes refer to the L, M, and S cones as the “red, green, and blue cones,” but this is misleading: each type of cone is sensitive to a range of wavelengths, not just one. So, while RGB happens to be the most versatile combination of wavelengths, it’s not the only way to make colors. Yellow, green, and blue does indeed make white, because it makes each cone react a lot. (I once confirmed this by putting a yellow, a green, and a blue LED next to each other, and together they did make white.) You could even get white with just two wavelengths - a lot of yellowish-green to activate both L and M, plus some blue to activate S. I chose to name yellow, green, and blue in the video, rather than RGB, because (1) if you haven’t heard of the RGB system, it would probably make the most sense if I used the wavelength each cone is most sensitive to, and (2) if you _are_ familiar with RGB, using this combination could help demonstrate that RGB is not the only way to make colors.
*What about violet/purple?*
At 2:31, I mention that L cones are slightly sensitive to the shortest wavelengths of visible light. This little bump of sensitivity is what makes violet different from blue. While all the shorter wavelengths activate the S cone, the very shortest visible wavelengths _also_ activate the L cone a bit, and this L + S combination makes us see violet instead of blue.
However, violet is still pretty blue; there are a lot of purples that are redder than this. These more purple-y purples cannot be created by a single wavelength; instead, they require one wavelength to activate the S cones and another one to activate the L cones. Because most purples cannot be made with a single wavelength, you might hear people say that “there is no purple light,” or maybe even more extreme things like “purple does not exist.” It is true that most shades of purple cannot be made from a single wavelength of light, so in that sense there is no purple light - but purple (and magenta, and pink) are still just as valid colors as any other.
except the light entering the eye only has wavelength - not colour. to say "blue light" is wrong, light only has a _value_ in the universe, it gets _colour_ from the brain, this is why we can't tell if MY "red" is the same "red" that YOU see.
@@HarryNicNicholas Yeah, that’s true, and I tried to build up to that idea at the end of the video. I’m essentially using e.g. “blue light” as short for “light of a wavelength that we would perceive as blue if only that wavelength entered our eye,” but being exact in this way would probably make the video harder to understand.
@@CalderRuhlHansen thanks for the reply, yes it would be hard to take in but i think it's important to be accurate, and this is a topic that has literally no exposure, there is only one video that describes the actual process, so if you have time...what i am now intrigued to find out is how data is carried from the retina to the image making part of the brain, neurons transmit information by ionising sodium / potassium, but how does wavelength info (or any info, smell, hearing) get carried? the process has to be the same for all the senses and the brain must sort this info...but how does wavelength data get to the image making part of the brain?
@@HarryNicNicholas Nice physics clarification, but for the purposes of this video, it sounds a little like splitting hairs. With all due respect to you.
@@HarryNicNicholas Great question. The fact that we still have humans with varying degrees of color blindness, that it has been demonstrated that many people can actually differentiate shades of color that other people can't, that (maybe all) documented cultures in the world started developing words for different colors at different stages in history, attest to how delicate and fine-tuned that process must be in our brains.
So freaking useful. Not even my uni lecturers can explain this properly
As clear as any explanation I've seen before and shorter than a lot of them. Really quite good
Great job, feelsgood watching this after 200 pages of pure science of colour lol.
This is the best explanation i have ever seen in internet...still very less subscribers... World is not fair...
Wow so technically the color of things are literally everything besides what we see! Mind blowing
This is the best explainer on this topic on RUclips. Keep up the good work.
This is great. After watching several videos and reading, this answered my remaining questions like how colours like brown and pink work. Great job!
One of the best educational videos I've ever seen!
This is excellent! We need more videos like this, keep up the content!
hands down best video on understanding color i've seen
Very clear explanation of something I never quite understood before. Thank you!
Yay! This video made the whole thing so easy to understand. Thanks!!!
Wow. The stop motion is really cool. Thanks for the video.
That was cute, and well put together for the majority of the video, it's nice : ]
Well done and nicely explained.
Thank you.
Loved it!! best explanation ever!
Beautifully explained.
Nice job, this was a really good video!
Really nice! I dont understand why it doesnt have more views!
THIS IS SUPER HELPFUL. Thank you
You have a talent. Great video
What a great content! Congrats!!
finally, the answer to dispel my nagging hypothesis regarding what i deemed a misnomer in referring to the "visible" spectrum based on the, apparently incorrect information, that our color perception is activated by only red, green, or blue wavelengths.
Good explanation and style.
The interference of many wavelengths gave you a different perception in your brain, this also applies to the sound wave.
whaaaaaaaaaaat thanks for sharing!
Oh wow! Thank you
Cool explanation!
Great video!!
Very good video.
so nice video, good job
Love how the music matches the animation
Color coordination differentiation
Thank you for your wonderful video. I've seen a funny video about that saying, "purple doesn't exist", which was very scientific but still didn't reach your level of clarity.
I'm more certain now that the world around us is an illusion created by our brain. The fact that said illusion is widely shared (to the point that I'm sure most humans will agree that the laptop I'm typing on is black with white letters painted on the keys, and that grass is green and girls are pretty) sounds reassuring, but somehow more misleading.
This is a very nice informative video can we use this as reference for our video? Thanks in advance!
Great 👍
What topic in chemistry can answer why we see colors?
The best explanation on RUclips! Thank you :)
Good job :-)
Beautiful yes. No colour out there. ❤
you need more subs this is to good to be ignored
Abdullah lol too*
This is a really nice job but I wished you explained purple light but still the best video on education.
I know this comment is 3 years old, but… I added an explanation of purple light to the pinned comment on the top. I would have wanted to talk about purple in the video, but I made it for a competition with a 5-minute time limit.
(I might have also responded to this comment with an explanation at some point, but that comment got deleted when I migrated this video to a different account.)
@@CalderRuhlHansen oh, cool. Thanks and again, good job.
is it possible we could all perceive colour differently?
color in general? I think so! looking into things like Synesthesia...or how much color deficiency prescriptions vary?!...OH HECK YEA.. its like asking u to describe your sense/the sense sight to a lifelong blind person... but your colorblind and farsighted lol 🤦🏽♀🤦🏽♀🤣🤣My color deficient denying grandmother 😂😂 has been interchanging blue & brown clothing to make "matching" outfits fo 1000 years & when i tell you im 36 now & THE LEVELS at which |this shirt works & that one doesnt" FREAKIN VARY. WILDLY. they have kid videos where the game is to look at a panel of varying shades side by side and find the darker/lighter one.. we fight about colors in this house & OFTEN 😂😂
Nice
@2:34 If I am reading your chart correctly, long wavelength cones are sensitive to red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, and violet. Is that correct?
want more more more.. thank you
Great video! Thank you
Hello! I do believe it's beacause the material it is made. Must be something with the fact that, for example, fruits with same colors have, in general, similar types of nutrients. Hope I helped somehow!
@@jessikacaroline72 so if i dye a jacket blue and a jacket red, it still has exactly the same material, just different dye, it absorbs completely different frequencies?
Those rods are so sad! Someone give them a hug!
Sooo, color doesn't exist and it's only a visual representation of reflected wavelengths. I wonder what causes some objects to reflect/absorb certain frequencies. And are we able to see color in photos and movies for the same reason we can hear recorded audio? which is a frequency within itself
well down !
I always heard that the cones were senbitive to red, blue and green? Is it true or is yellow instead of red?
@@CalderRuhlHansen yes it makes a lot of sense now. Thanks for the answer!
Oops, my old answer got deleted when I migrated my videos to this account. I added an explanation for this and similar questions in the pinned comment.
I still don't understand how colors are absorbed / reflected on a nanometer level.
Great video, +1 LIKE. Anyway, I think you got one thing wrong. Pink light is not R a lot and G, B a little. It would still be red. PINK is fascinating because it is R + B, a lot but without G. It means, it pink exists only in our brain because it's not in one place in the spectrum. It binds our perception of long and short waves, that's why we can draw color CIRCLE. Pink is the glue between red and blue. :)
There are many colors that get called "pink". One version of pink is certainly red plus white, so there is nothing wrong with his explanation. The pink @tix is describing is simply a bluer version of pink.
Re-adding a comment here since my old one got deleted -
As John says, there are a lot of colors that we call “pink,” and the one in the video and the bluer type you mention both count. The reason I described the pink I did is that I think people are accustomed to thinking of pink as red plus white, so I thought it would make the most sense if I described a pink made essentially from red plus white.
How do our brains know which neurons are connected to S cones, which are connected to M cones and which are connected to L cones?
L cons are most sensitive to yellow or red ????
They’re most sensitive to yellow. However, they are the only cones that are (significantly) sensitive to red, so they are mainly what gets activated when you see red.
Is this not “refraction NOT “Reflection” when the light bounces off the car?
Nice video, I just dont get why you used trough the video the right Red Green and Blue as the colours that form white, but the switch to Yellow at the end, which is wrong, mixing Red Green and Yellow you dont get white
@@CalderRuhlHansen wow... Thanks for giving me such a Nice answer... Although in the case of using YGB am I correct in assuming that you have to use a dimmer Green light? because the yellow light will activate green cones much more than red light, so with the same amount of green and blue light I would assume you get a greenish white colour?
@@CalderRuhlHansen awesome, all clear, thanks! :)
(I had previously given an answer here, but it got deleted when I migrated accounts)
I believe it is true that, if you are using YGB (yellow, green, and blue) to make white, you’ll need a dimmer green light, to make up for the fact that the yellow is already partially activating the M cones.
I really haven’t get why you said Y G B make white instead of RGB cause I'm not a native English speaker. So can you explain that in simple English please? Note: I've commented this after reading your pinned comment
Sure, I will do my best!
There are many ways to make white. Both RGB and YGB make white. RGB makes all three types of cones react a lot, so we see white. YGB also makes all three types of cones react a lot, so we see white.
Why do both RGB and YGB make all three types of cones react a lot? Here is why:
- The “S” cone reacts to Blue light. When there is RGB or YGB, there is Blue light, and the “S” cone reacts to that.
- The “M” cone reacts to Green light. When there is RGB or YGB, there is Green light, and the “M” cone reacts to that.
- The “L” cone reacts to Red light and _also_ to Yellow light. When there is RGB, there is Red light, and the “L” cone reacts to that. When there is YGB, there is Yellow light, and the “L” cone reacts to that. So, there can be either Red or Yellow, and the “L” cone will react.
So, both RGB and YGB make all three types of cones (L, M, and S) react. The most important idea is this: each cone reacts to many different types of light. So, there are many different ways to make a cone react. And so, there are many different types of light that make us see the same color.
Did that make sense?
@@CalderRuhlHansen Thanks! Got it now :)
i love u
I thought it was L-cones used red wavelengths instead or yellow.
I just wrote an explanation for this in the pinned comment at the top, since a lot of people have asked about it. Let me know if anything in it doesn’t make sense!
minutephysics send me here!
"Light is a wave"
Einstein: WRONG!
This looks so difficult lol
Such a good video, but the background music is soooo annoying, I couldn't concentrate
That was very interesting and informative. However, the narrator sounded a bit robotic.
I’m hearing colors rn someone help me please
When explaining how the brain perceives color, it does not make sense to refer to "red light" or "yellow light" since color is not a property of light, and you're including the thing you're trying to explain, color, in the explanation of color.
So your saying color is fake and it’s just a illusion
Now watch it stoned
Great explanation, one of the best, but spoilt by a yappy commentary and and annoying/poor sound
ruclips.net/video/7aHCvUL9RA8/видео.html :v
How do our brains know which neurons are connected to S cones, which are connected to M cones and which are connected to L cones?