The Color Pink Does Not Exist [VIDEO]

Here's a fun fact for you: the color pink (or magenta, as it is officially named) does not actually exist. We all had to memorize "ROYGBIV" in science class to remember the colors of the light spectrum, and sure enough there is no pink or magenta in the spectrum. (Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet...in case you forgot.)

Pink is actually the absence of green. When our brains see to colors from opposite ends of the visible light spectrum (red and violet) they simply make up a color to represent what was there. Pink is simply what our brain uses to represent the absence of green.

I'm not making this up, the Minute Physics video makes more sense of it below.

See? Learning can be fun. You can also check out this website which gives a more detailed, yet still understandable description of how and why pink does not technically exist. It even has a few optical illusions to prove the point that will blow your mind.

Here's a little excerpt from that site:

The light spectrum consists of a range of wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation. Red light has the longest wavelength; violet the shortest. The colours in between have wavelengths between those of red and violet light.

When our eyes see colours, they are actually detecting the different wavelengths of the light hitting the retina. Colours are distinguished by their wavelengths, and the brain processes this information and produces a visual display that we experience as colour.

This means that colours only really exist within the brain – light is indeed travelling from objects to our eyes, and each object may well be transmitting/reflecting a different set of wavelengths of light; but what essentially defines a ‘colour’ as opposed to a ‘wavelength’ is created within the brain. - Liz Elliott

Neat, huh?

[Minute Physics]

[Biotel]