• Question: how do you know that blue the colour blue is not red, why was it made that colour and not anouther colour :)

    Asked by jadeee to Alastair, Emma, Hywel, Keith, Vicki on 17 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Alastair Sloan

      Alastair Sloan answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      I am probably the worst person to answer that question as I am colour blind!!

    • Photo: Keith Brain

      Keith Brain answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      You’re quite right – I can’t know. We just learn a name for a colour that looks consistently the same to us. But I have no idea how it looks to you.

    • Photo: Vicki Stevenson

      Vicki Stevenson answered on 16 Jun 2010:

      identifying colours is something we’re all taught in a similar way while we’re children – collectively we’ve all been told that the sun is yellow, the sky is blue and the post box is red so we all have the same reference point when we learn colours.

      Colour can be very important in businesses – for example if you buy a shirt in one shop and trousers in another you want to be fairly sure that the’ll look ok together. The lighting in the shop is different from daylight and can affect how we see the colour – so the shirt we thought was lovely in a shop can look pretty awful when we get outdoors!

      You can actually measure colours so that if you wanted to order some painted steel for a building extension, you can guarantee that it will match the original building by specifying the colour.

    • Photo: Hywel Vaughan

      Hywel Vaughan answered on 17 Jun 2010:

      Hi Jadeee,
      The way that we see colours is down to the ‘rods’ and ‘cones’ in our eyes. Rods don’t process colour- they use black, white and shades of grey.
      The cones however contain different pigments that react differently to different colours. Each pigment absorbs a particular wavelength of colour. There are short wavelength cones that absorb blue light, middle wavelength cones that absorb green light, and long wavelength cones that absorb red light.

      It is those different wavelengths that mean that we know that blue is blue and red is red. Whether everyone sees exactly the same shade of a colour though is something that is hotly debated! Did you know that If we lose our eye sight and become blind, the body adapts and receives colour rays through the skin? It takes time for our bodies to adapt, but it has been shown that people who are blind can still tell between different colours! 😀

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