Poll: In your own words, can you describe how colors form?

Question

Can you also list your religious affiliation in your answer?

I'm curious.

Answer 1

Yes I can. Do you want the short answer regarding just the two types of colour formation (additive and subtractive) or the mechanistic explanation of how the rods and cone cells in our eyes function, including the action of the retinal dyes Rhodopsin and Retinol.
OK, lets skip the long explanation. Colours can be formed by absorbing light with pigments and dies. This is subtractive. You can remove frequencies out of white light and only see what is left. The primary colours Red, Yellow and Blue represent this system.
You can also form colours by adding different colour light. The primary colours are Magenta, Cyan and Indigo.
If you mix all of the colours together the subtractive system should give you black, but because you seldom find pure colour pigments you normally just get a muddy greyish brown.
If you mix all colours in the additive system you get white.
The colours on your computer screen are formed by the additive colour system with light.

Colours can also be produced by interference of the light wave.
Thos is seen on thin films like oil on water, and some plastic wraps. It is most noticible in hature on the colours of bird feathers and butterfly wings. It is because light refltected from fron or back surfaces are slightly out of phase.
Then there is the prism effect where light frequencies are separated by refraction. (Sir Isaac Newton did a lot of work on this one)

Answer 2

Honestly, I cannot. I have read the other answers, and I remember the basic Physical Science courses, but I could not tell anyone WHY one substance absorbs certain light wavelengths, while reflecting others; and other substances absorb and reflect entirely different frequencies of light. Nor can I delineate how our eyes use rods, cones, rhodopsin, etc., to send appropriate electrical signals to our brains.

I am in awe that some blind people have been rigged with cybernetic devices that allow them to "see' with some electronic instrument attached to their TONGUES !

In other words, our science has been able to comment on some of the steps involved in our perception of colors. But that is far from complete knowledge. And how the energetic forces of physics translate into our inner and subjective mental experiences remains a mystery.

I'm a Pantheist. I consider that all of Reality is God, and God is all of Reality. ( usual ideas about God imply Dualism, which I abhor.) There is no "Church" of Pantheism. I was born and indoctrinated Roman Catholic.

But you are much too smart to ask these two questions without a reason. What do you consider as a possible correlation between a science question, and religious belief ?
( I am also curious :-)

Answer 3

Wow... that's a strange question. It's like asking how "shapes" form, colors are an abstract concept for patterns we see, and this question could mean quite a few different things.

Light, of specific wavelengths that can be perceived as color is created when electrons are excited and begin to jump up and down orbitals rapidly, releasing photons (and losing some of this energy). Different materials at different temperatures emit different wavelengths when this happens, creating differences that would be perceived as color. Of course, if you mean color in the popular human experience, usually it is a mix of many of these wavelengths that is experienced, which has no color (is white), color is then created when some of these wavelengths are absorbed while the others are reflected at the viewer.

More directly, the concepts of colors form when a child learns the association of words already in a culture to specific perceptions of light they are familiar with via the "cone" photoreceptors in the human eye. For the congenitally blind color never forms, or forms much later in a completely different (imagined) way.

Answer 4

Colors are part of the spectrum in the visible light range but how you see them is dependent upon the human mind (some studies have shown that retinas from person to person are no different) as no two interpret color in exactly the same way. I've seen this numerous times training lab techs on wet titrations - using the same amount of indicator with each person, the color achieved at the endpoint will be called slightly different colors depending on the person.

No religion - atheist.

Answer 5

Colors? Well look into quantum mechanics. When white light strikes an atom, the electrons become excited and jump energy levels. Depending on which energy level they jump to will determine what wavelength of light is emitted. Different elements give off a different emission spectrum of light, and that's how colors are formed!

And fyi, I'm part catholic

Answer 6

Honestly, unless i look it up, i would not be able to tell you from the top of my mind. I have my own believe system, i believe the Earth is a living organism with a spiritual consciousness and we are micro organism which form part of the whole organism. In turn the Earth is a micro organism within the universal organism. That is as much as i know with great certainty, the rest will all just be speculation....

Answer 7

Agnostic:

(long answer BRB)

Colors are formed when light passes through an obstacle and changes wave length. This "brakes" light into a rainbow. Giving the illusion of color.

Colored objects/substances: "Objects" are obstacles to light. When light its an object, the object absorbs the light radiation, save for the color it will appear to you. The "color" is actually residual light bouncing back to you.

The eye will then analyse what relects into it and the brain will analyse it and tell you which color you are seeing. The final color you perceive will depend on the quality of your eyes.

Answer 8

Colors are formed by the reflection of various frequencies of light. An object appears red because it reflects only the frequencies of light that we perceive as red. We do not see the other colors because those frequencies are absorbed.

A lot of interesting answers though.

Spiritual not religious.


With Love,
Shane K.

Answer 9

Colours result from the wavelength reflectivity of white light on a surface. Surfaces we see as "blue" reflect mostly short wavelengths and absorb longer wavelengths, surfaces that appear "red" reflect mostly short wavelengths. The sky appears blue (though it is actually black) because white light from the Sun is filtered through the nitrogen in the atmosphere which allows mostly short wavelength light through.

Answer 10

Color derives from the spectrum of light (distribution of light energy versus wavelength) interacting in the eye with the spectral sensitivities of the light receptors. Color categories and physical specifications of color are also associated with objects, materials, light sources, etc., based on their physical properties such as light absorption, reflection, or emission spectra.


Atheist :D