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I appreciate the skittles reference
Is it a skittles reference or is it a reference to purple not being an actual color and thus not a part of the rainbow?
the heck do you mean purple is not an actual colour??
Purple, the color directly between red and blue, is a creation of your mind interpreting a band of light that triggers your red and blue sensing nerves, but no green is sensed. The actual band of light we can see goes from red to green to blue. Purple doesn’t fall between those colors, meaning it wouldn’t be included in a rainbow, and isn’t any “pure” light you could see, since it doesn’t fall on the spectrum.
Essentially, any time you see purple, you’re seeing two different frequencies of light that your mind interprets as a single frequency.
What is violet at the end of the visible spectrum, then? We call the higher wavelength stuff ultraviolet, and violet looks purple to me, so I’m having trouble reconciling this stuff with what you’re saying.
We call it that but our eyes see the far end frequency as a colour that only very slightly activates blue sensitive cone receptors and no others. For red sensitive cones there is a slight bump in the high end frequencies also that makes it possible for them to look violet as it activates the blue sensitive and a bit of red sensitive receptors but a much purpler purple is made by combining high and low frequencies.
There is evidence to show that violet does actually weakly activates red cones too. This is because the violet light starts creeping up to double the frequency of the lower end of the red sensitivity, and so it can actually successfully activate it very weakly. There are other factors that can lessen or even fully negate that effect though, it’s all kind of fuzzy.
Violet is dark spectral blue, added as a separate color by people who wanted 7 not six colors in the spectrum
You’re thinking of indigo.
Red
Orange
Yellow
Green
Blue
Violet
That’s 6.
Would this not disqualify any mixed color? We only have receptors for three colors, and if we’re arguing that purple isn’t a color because it’s actually two mixed together, that should also mean colors like orange, yellow, cyan, magenta, atc are also not colors by that definition right?
ah a similar explanation to why yellow is not an actual colour either
the silly explanation that has no effect on how we perceive, use, or think about colour. sigh why are the people responsible for those studies calling those colours not real? Why not just colours resulting from mixing other colours like the artists have done since the invention of paint?
Sorry for the confusion. Yellow is a single wavelength of light. We perceive it with the green and red receptors in our eyes, but it is a single wavelength. Purple isn’t a single wavelength, but two that are being interpreted as a color.
That was the distinction I was calling out.
and that is why i didn’t say the same explanation, but similar
both, in my opinion, suffer from the clickbait disease “YOU CAN’T SEE YELLOW 😱” (directly, because to see it you use two light receptors combined) “PURPLE DOESN’T EXIST 😱” (as a single wavelength colour because as opposed to the other colours of the rainbow it uses a combination of red and blue wavelengths)
i don’t blame you for either of course, i’m just expressing my general annoyance with the phrasing of both science facts
This is 100% incorrect. Not in terms of science, but in terms of a qualifier of what a colour is. Just because a colour doesn’t exist on the rainbow spectrum, doesn’t mean it’s not an “actual colour”.
What you’re referring to is the definition of colour specifically by physics. There are other professional fields and areas of science that use different qualifiers for colour. I work with color everyday and I can with certainty say that purple, pink, rust, teal, and sky blue are all colours.
Kind of like how different fields have different definitions of entropy or different cultures have different names for snow. It’s all dependent on the framework you use and ignoring every other framework is wrong.
Your definition of color is based only on human perception? Is purple a color for a mantis shrimp?
Edit: I guess not in a pure sense because it’s still two wavelengths of light. Perhaps a mantis shrimp can detect a totally different wavelength and sees it as “purple” or something.
Now I’m thinking about how we don’t know how other humans interpret colors. Like what I see as red, you may see as blue. Ugh.
Definition I’m using is any color that can be expressed as a single wavelength of light. Purple cannot be, since it’s actually two wavelengths simultaneously.
Perceiving it as a color seems more practical though. It’s not like we look at “red” and think “ah yes, a single wavelength of light”
Don’t let them pee on your Cheerios. Purple is a color, just like magenta, pink, cyan, brown, and all the other “not in the rainbow/ROYGBIV” colors.
Gatekeeping colors, I tell ya. Don’t let 'em get you burnt sienna with rage.
I believe it’s indigo not purple there.
Correct. Initially, Newton didn’t have indigo in his list for the visible spectrum, but he wanted seven colors instead of six because it matched up with the number of notes in music (and because he liked the number). So at some point there was discussion of removing indigo entirely because it’s kinda just a shade between blue and violet that the human eye just isn’t as good at distinguishing compared to the other colors. But the neat thing is that what people back in Newton’s time called blue and indigo is more akin to what we today call cyan and blue (they know this by looking at his labeled drawings of the light scattered by prisims). Now the spectral colors are: red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, and violet.
and thus not a part of the rainbow?
Colour need not be on the rainbow. Colour is the human experience of colour which includes purple
Our minds don’t care whether a color is pure or whether it is a mix. We see those colors.
Like the berries there are technical definitions of colour that don’t mesh with the common definition
Seeing the creator write “actually,” instead of “oh yeah?” somehow feels wrong.
That’s because the scientific definition of berries has little in common with the colloquial one. That doesn’t make either wrong, they are just used in different contexts
We really should rename botanical berries to something else.
The thing is, there is for sure some Latin technical term that you can use. And it’s still close enough to berries to call them that.
Oh probably, but I don’t speak latin. Most people don’t speak latin; there’s like 1000 people in the world maximum who could hold a conversation in latin.
I love it.
I know you didn’t mean it, but this has the, “Do I LOOK like I speak Latin?” Energy and as a American, I’m all about that.
Lucky, I mean it is exactly the opposite way! Teach me some local languages, like Cree or Dene, maybe something Inuk.
I guess I am telling people to speak English though, aren’t I? Well it’s good to keep updated on the colonizer tongue I suppose.
Now get off my native grass lawn!
Botanical vs culinary.
This feels like a case where botanical science should just have picked a different name. If you invalidate everything people think of as a berry and then tell them a dozen things that are clearly not berries are, in fact, berries, you’re just making the word berry meaningless.
Berry means a tiny, usually sweet, fruit-like growth from a plant. The kind that is usually picked in bunches. The kind that you use to make smoothies. That’s a berry.
Botany did us all a disservice by choosing the word “berry” to mean “a specific thing which invalidates everything you think is a berry.” Just call that plant structure something in Latin, ffs.
Well, cooking terms and botany terms are not the same. Any non reproductive part of a plant is vegetable. But in cooking we have a completely different idea of what vegetables are.
This really doesn’t matter because most people are not botanists and those who are probably know the terms. The only people that care are quirky internet people with debates about weather or not potato salad should be considered a cake or something.
“Weather” is a nice ultimate touch
They did. It’s Baca. Which means berry. Or maybe cow. Naming stuff is hard
Naming would be easier if we collectively review the names every few years and retire the BS.
Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.
Knowledge is knowing the common definition of fruit doesn’t include tomato.
Sometimes you feel like a peanut is not a nut!
Sometimes you don’t!
I’ve willfully disregarded botanical terminology every since I learned it.
Bad practice, picking generic terms to define differently.
A berry is a watery, often sweet fruit under 4cm
That is the colloquial definition. The scientific definition of a berry differs a bit.
Yeah, well scientists just like making things more complicated so they can feel important
If it’s a small fruit you can pop in your mouth without a stone, it’s a berry
Don’t be a lemon
Nah, science just deals with clear functional definitions over gut feeling
Source: I’m a scientist and I do not feel important
Lol sad if you actually think that
Behold - a berty https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_tomato
They said often sweet, not…
I can’t think of something disgusting to properly describe how much I hate cherry tomatoes.
but what about boo-berry?
Ah! A person of rare and refined taste!
Scary-berry
Berry Wight
wait until you hear about vegetables
Just happened last week.
Me: “I don’t even want to get started about vegetables. We’ll go into it for hours.”
Them: “Wait what?”
(Proceeds to go into a long conversation for hours)
Pumpkin pie also rarely is made with pumpkin, it’s usually squash
Pumpkin pie is always made with squash. Occasionally, those squash are pumpkins
Pumpkin is a squash
Having made pumpkin pies for decades, this is true. Pumpkin is a squash.
Pumpkin pie is gross. Apple is the superior turkey-day pie.
What?
Botanically speaking they are correct.
How is a pumpkin a berry?
With great effort, I imagine. A pumpkin is also a squash.
Pumpkins are cool
What about what?
The post probably.
What post?
What?
Sir, this is a Wendy’s
No it’s a berry.
Sir, this is a berry.
TIL, wow. I mean, to be fair, “berry” is in the damn name, so I never questioned it.
These are lies! This is pumpkin propaganda, spread by the spirit of Halloween.
