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COLOURS |
Pic by Bing AI (!) My prompt...
(For best results, please view page in landscape).
Quick and easy version...
Colour is a very complex subject – but don’t worry, we will only look at the basics on this site... Colour is part of a thing called the “Electromagnetic spectrum”. This includes 7 different bands – from the low frequency * end they are;
Radio waves.
Microwaves.
Infrared.
Visible light.
Ultraviolet.
X rays.
Gamma rays.
(* Low frequency / long wavelength).
For now, we will only look at the Visible section of light (for more info on the other bands, see below).
Visible light contains the colours that we see. Colour can be categorized in a number of different ways;
Here are some (just some) of the colour models;
Colour is not actually divided into seperate, colour steps, but is part of a “continuum”. This means that means that even though there are different colours, the steps between them are not clearly divided. For here, the colour model I would like to use is “RYB”.
So, your 3 primary colours are;
Red
Yellow
Blue.
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Now, if you quite simply add those colours together – (literally, you can get paint and try this);
Mixing the above colours, will give you-
Your 6 secondary colours;
Red
Orange
Yellow
Green
Blue
Purple
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So – not 7 colours in the rainbow! Again we simply add the colours to get -
Your 12 “tertiary” (3rd) colours;
Red
Red/Orange
Orange
Orange/Yellow
Yellow
Yellow/green
Green
Green/Blue
Blue
Blue/Purple
Purple
Purple/Red.
Please note; The above colours where I have used a slash “/” have a number of other possible names –
the simplest version is the way I have done it above...
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On the next page, we shall look more at the importance of the number 12 which we just used to great effect here...
Let’s just finish this section by saying that visible light (and therefore colour) is a clearly defined part or cycle –
of a larger phenomenon – the electromagnetic spectrum...
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Here are some pics of the “Electromagnetic spectrum”.
.png)
Pic from Wikipedia.
Pic from Wikipedia.
So as you can see from the picture, visible light, falls in the range of around 400 to 700 nm or “nano meters”. In other words,
an extremely short wavelength, with a very fast frequency. Interestingly wavelength and frequency are “inversely proportional”.
This means that “waves with higher frequencies have shorter wavelengths and lower frequencies have longer wavelengths”.
Quote from Wikipedia.com – on the wavelength page. It could be visualised as looking a bit like this;
By Lookang - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16874302
At the red end of visible light we see, the spectrum coninue off into “Infrared”, and at the violet end, it continues into “Ultra violet”.
We use both ultra violet and infrared for many technological applications. Such as medical equipment, and specialized communication and viewing equipment. Fibre optic cable uses infrared light, as do military see in the dark glasses.
Interestingly, some animals (birds, fish and insects) use at least some infrared light, and some other creatures (snakes and beatles) use ultraviolet radiation.
So, I hope I’ve given you an interesting little overview of some of the basics of this subject – and hopefully left you wanting to research a little more on your own?! If yes, here are a few more links about it;
https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/visible-light/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_spectrum
Many thanks for joining me,
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back to index page.