Re: OT raibow

On Sun, 02 Dec 2007 00:35:53 +0000, Ilya Zakharevich wrote:
A rainbow contains VERY mixed colors. It's a wonder that these colors
are distinguishable by eye at all; they are very low saturation (even if
the background is very dark - which it usually is not).

Getting further and further off-topic.

I am under the impression that a rainbow contains/is a "frequency sweep"
of visible light, which would mean that the colors aren't mixed - at
every point you'd have light of a single frequency.

The way the human eye actually processes light means visible light is
processed as a mixture of stimuli to the 3 types of cone cells, but
looking at the wiki page*, it seems that all colours except the ones at
the far ends of the spectrum are detected by at least 2 of the 3 types of
cell.

If you mean that real-life rainbows are mixed with light from all kinds
of other sources, and don't just contain a plain spectrum, I agree.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_vision

Joost.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Did you know?
    ... There are two types of visual receptor in the eye, called rod cells and cone cells. ... Its rod cells that give you low light vision, since they are much more sensitive than cone cells. ... Cone cells give you colour vision, since rods tend to react only to light intensity not wavelength. ... If you have different numbers of rods in each eye, then the eye with more rods will be better at night vision. ...
    (uk.singles)
  • Re: Did you know?
    ... There are two types of visual receptor in the eye, called rod cells and cone cells. ... Its rod cells that give you low light vision, since they are much more sensitive than cone cells. ... Cone cells give you colour vision, since rods tend to react only to light intensity not wavelength. ... If you have different numbers of rods in each eye, then the eye with more rods will be better at night vision. ...
    (uk.singles)