• Question: Is it true that people may see different colours, such as your blue could be different to mine?

    Asked by lalaeccles to Christina, Colin, Jess, Samaneh, Steve on 18 Jun 2013. This question was also asked by teniola.
    • Photo: Steven Gardner

      Steven Gardner answered on 18 Jun 2013:

      could be, how could you know?

    • Photo: Christina Pagel

      Christina Pagel answered on 18 Jun 2013:

      Yes and no!

      Each colour that we see is associated with a particular wavelength of light… you know how a rainbow is lots of different colours? If you think of waves in the sea, the wavelength is the disatnce between two wave tops. Light can also be thought of as a wave, so blue light is light where the wave tops are closer together than red light. So in a sense we all see the same colours, because they are defined by the same specific physical properties.

      BUT, as to how each colour actually looks to us, who knows if they look the same? we know they don’t for people who have colour blindness so maybe they all look a bit different for everyone else. I guess they can’t look too different though because we use similar words to describe colours (ie we agree on the difference between light and dark blue or on what colours clash etc..)

Comments

  • Photo: piwikiwi3

    piwikiwi3 commented on :

    You know how animals have different colour spectrums to humans generally? Is it possible that there is an animal that can see way more colours than us and is there a way to find out? Could we EVER see the colour? Like if we changed our rods and cones or whatever lets us see our colours?

    • Photo: Christina

      Christina commented on :

      Oh yeah there are definitely animals that can see colours we can’t – i think there a lot who can see in the ultraviolet spectrum for instance… We can already make glasses that let people see colours that we can’t see naturally so I think it might be possible one day to add implants to your eyes that process light that’s at higher or lower frequencies than we can see now…

    • Photo: Steve

      Steve commented on :

      I’m fairly sure bees see in ultra violet, but in terms of the most impressive eyes, all creature must bow down to the mighty Mantis Shrimp. The Mantis shrimp has 16 different types of receptor cell (we have 4) and can see ultraviolet light and even different types of polarisation!

  • Photo: cattyboy

    cattyboy commented on :

    @Jess @Christina Do bed Bugs actually exist