Mini Report 1: Colors and Wavelengths

In grammar school we all learned the 3 primary colors which make other colors are red, blue and yellow and the secondary colors are green, orange and violet (purple). We learned that red and blue make purple and blue n yellow make green. I’ve actually been playing with shades of different colors while making icing for Italian cookies that I bake, the box of food coloring has red, blue, yellow and green and the back of the box has a chart of different colors and how any drops to use to get certain colors or shades. For example: supposedly 5 drops of yellow and 1 red makes orange sunset. For example: I recently came up with a pretty green using the blue and yellow instead of wasting the actual green which I use a lot during Christmas. Reading the chapter 9 on Perceiving color was to me the most interesting chapter. I thought it was interesting that when it discussed the main colors there were 4 instead of 3 (primary colors). The 4^th color was of course green and it made sense; after all it is the 4^th color in the food coloring box. I always thought Green was more important then what my grammar art class taught us.

I think the most interesting part of the chapter was how wavelengths are involved when we perceive colors. It was interesting to hear the word saturation when the color white is assed to colors. As we learned in Chapter 3, wavelengths are measured in nanometers (nm) and 1nm=10(-9) meters. 400nm is a short wavelength and 700 is a long wavelength. I found the table 1.9 on page 204 to be extremely interesting. It showed how blue is a short wavelength, green is median, red is long, yellow is long and median and white is all three, short, median and long. Why those colors? Why does one color have a shorter wavelength then another? Its amazing how scientists and whoever else developed and came up with these ideas. Its fascinating how the colors of objects we see is greatly determined by the wavelengths of light that are reflected from the objected into our eyes. I don’t think I completely get the whole idea but its still very interesting.