The colour green is the same frequency as radio waves ...?

Question

... or so someone told me out of the blue many years ago. I never figured it out. Does that mean that theoretically we are able to 'hear' what green-leaved plants are 'communicating'.

The person that originally told me this was an electronics engineer so he was not totally ignorant on frequencies ... unlike me :-)
Thanks for answers so far ... still very technical though :-(

Answer 1

good grief - there is a lot of 'part' knowledge here...

you need to break this down and talk about the different parts of what the original question was asking.

if it was 'see', the explanation would be the same as for hearing by the way. (it would be easier to explain about seeing)

here goes...

inside your ear you have these little hairs (cillia) that are a certain distance apart. when a sound wave enters the ear the wavelength of this wave will stimulate hairs at both its high energy points (its troughs or peaks, you choose, not important) your brain knows the distance of the hairs and so can interprut this wave distance between two lots of hairs being stimulated. thats how you get the frequency (number of wavelengths in a second) of sound in your ear. the volume (loudness) depends on how vigourously the hairs are moved by the sound wave. (thats why you can go deaf listening to loud music - you kill those little hairs if too loud).

notice i said sound!

your question is about electromagnetic waves. radio waves and visible light (green) waves are both of the same stuff (light energy - some we can see and some we cannot). the organ for detecting this energy is the eye. inside the eye, the retina (back of the eye) has special cells called rods and cones for detecting different wavelengths (i believe this is what your engineer was on about). each of these cells has a specific chemical for detecting a certain wavelength. lets pick on one.

the red light cone has a protein inside that has a special part that can move to a slightly higher energy form (a more awkward position for the proten so it wants to get back to where it was before - think of bending a ruler... the more you bend it, the more it wants to get back to where it was... so the higher the energy it has) when red light is shone on that protein (inside the eye) it provides enough energy to move this extra part of the protein (called an apoprotein portion is anyone wants to know) to a higher energy state and this is enough to induce (make happen) a signal being sent to the brain that says 'red light detected' and we see red light.

a similar thing happens to green light.

in physics, when we talk of waves whether in music or lihgth or nanometers, if you have something of the same wavelength then it is detected as the same.

if you have something of a different wavelngth then it is detect as different ( or in the case of the eye.. or even the ear, not detected at all, unless your are green, red or blue light)

but if you have a wavelength that is say x2 bigger, of x3 or x6 or x2000 times bigger exactly, with no extra and no bits needed.. it has to be exact. then these also will be detected.. A BIT. we call thesse harmonics. this is a word that belongs to music.

ever notice the way a piano has all those notes (only 8 notes and yet so many keys..?) these eight notes are repeated but in higher registers/keys, but they are still the same note.... a higher harmonic. all these wavelenths are doubled or trippled or what ever.

so, because there will be a harmonic of green light in the radiowave part of the spectrum... it can theoretically be detected. so you could theoretically detect green light (with the eye) and radiowaves (theoretically with the eye)... but never with the ear :-)

happy days - now lets look at information theory! why do we always lose information and yet still maintain the integroty of the message? at what point is the message lost?

Answer 2

No. You can see the green color which means it belongs to visible spectrum . There are no exact bounds to the visible spectrum; a typical human eye will respond to wavelengths from 400 to 700 nm, although some people may be able to perceive wavelengths from 380 to 780 nm. A light-adapted eye typically has its maximum sensitivity at around 555 nm, in the green region of the optical spectrum.
On the other hand, wavelenghs for radio wave ranges from 1 mm
to 10 Mm ( frequency 300 G Hz to 30 Hz)

Answer 3

The easy way to tell this is wrong is to turn on your kitchen radio and wave something green at it.

Maybe theis guy wasn't trying to tell you that green light is the same frequency as radio waves but that they're basically the same thing with different wavelengths. Just like microwaves, X-rays and gamma rays (which have so high a frequency they're radioactive).

Anyway, radio waves have lots of different frequencies, just like different colours of light do. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to pick up more than one radio station.

Answer 4

No - Radio waves have the lowest frequency in the electromagnetic spectrum. Green is part of the visible light section and this means that it has a much higher frequency than radio waves.

Answer 5

Despite what the first two answers say, radio waves and green light are both part of the electromagnetic spectrum and the same kind of waves. The frequencies or wavelengths though are dramatically different.

From the reference, green light is approximately 550 TeraHertz (500,000,000,000Hz) with a wavelength of approx 550nm (half a millionth of a metre or 0.000000550m). FM radio is at 100MHz (100.000.000Hz)and approx 3M wavelength ( a rough ratio of approximately 5,500,000 times higher frequency for green light).

So, in a convoluted way, our eyes are just really specialised radios!

Answer 6

No. The color green in visible light has a wavelength of 520 - 570 nanometers (nm), while radio waves have wavelengths of 1 -10 mm. The frequencies are VERY different.

* edit * Also, radio waves are not sound waves, we use them as carriers to transmit sound, as in your radio. But you can't hear them.

Answer 7

The color green isn't the same as radio waves. Whoever told you that was wrong, sorry. And just to be clear, because the person after me was wrong...all are a part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Radio waves are actually "light" waves, they just aren't part of the visible spectrum.

Answer 8

no, light (which is reflected by the colour green) is at a higher frequency than radio waves

Answer 9

NO! Radio-wave frequencies are MUCH lower than that of visible-light freqs.

Radio waves are still light.

Answer 10

I do not believe it is. However, the colour does seem to attract members of the opposite sex in most species. Perhaps, this is it's true frequency effect.