Comments by "Ginny Jolly" (@ginnyjollykidd) on "How To Accidentally Invent A Color" video.

  1. No, no, no! Colors are not invented. Greeks did not say there was no color blue and Norse did not say there was no orange. And I know that there are blue violets, the ones that grew in my yard when I was a child were real purple. Purple, as the violet in the rainbow, are at a spectrum wavelength of 380nm from peak to peak. This is not made up. This is not a blue wavelength mixed with the red wavelength of the next rainbow as a double rainbow. Yes, rainbows are diffractions of white light. But because we cannot see most of the light in white light, there is a distance between the primary diffraction and secondary diffraction, so visible light spectra from the same light source cannot overlap. If you see purple, you are seeing the real deal. The reason pigments look purple is because the pigment absorbs ALL the visible light EXCEPT purple. That's why plants are green. Chlorophyll absorbs all but green wavelengths of visible light. Pigments can be "invented," that is a person can fool around with compounds that will reflect the color you are looking for, but colors themselves—the wavelengths of light cannot be created. Now if you can't see violet or indigo, I can't help if you're colorblind. I can see vivid purple myself very well. As for the cones on our retinae, the two kinds we have (red, blue, and green) have different sensitivities to any one wavelength of light. These receptors send the brain signals about the wavelengths, and the brain assembles them into the concept of a color that most of our species define the same way. We perceive wavelength 380 nanometers different ways, and the brain interprets them as purple. But no matter how we perceive them—none of us can see ultraviolet but I it's there and science uses it— we perceive them in the same way as each other. But violet/purple has always existed, orange has always existed, and blue has always existed. And you can't invent color. Don't confuse people with semantics.
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