Why does violet light appear purple (mixture of red and blue)?

Question

Human have red, green and blue cones to distinguish color. Red and blue makes pueple. But light of shorter wavelength than blue (violet) looks purple. Why?

Answer 1

I did a search about this out of curiousity and there is an excellent explanation at the website listed below.

Basically he states that purple and violet are very different and they both stimulate a different set of cones. In fact he goes on to say that video cannot replicate the colors that we perceive as indigo and violet.

It reminds me of how one sunny day I looked at the purple petals that sometimes fall from the trees in LA and realized that they were vibrating at such a low wave length against the shade of dark green grass and out of the bright sunlight, that looking at it suddenly felt like I was staring at one of those 4d stereograms. This effect is not really something that can be captured with photography or video.

Answer 2

Whatever color you view is the phenomena of all colors of the spectrum being absorbed and reflecting back only the color you see on the visual spectrum. Whether a color is composed of two primary colors is of no consequence. All other colors have been absorbed and reflect back a mixture of the red and blue that comprises a purple color.

Answer 3

My best guess is that light rays are emitted in all directions. I believe light is a continuous spectrum

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You should probably post this in the physics section for a better answer