What’s your favorite color? Where do colors come from?Why do people see colors? Does everyone see colors the same way? How many colors are there in the world? We learn about colors with Kassia St. Clair, the author of a book called The Secret Lives of Color. We talk about the science of color as well as all the ways color and culture are intertwined.
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- In the back of our eye, there is a thin layer called the retina, where special nerve cells called photoreceptors help us see. There are two main types of photoreceptors: rods, which work at very low levels of light and help us see different shades of light; and cones, which are specialized to help us see different colors.
- Most people have three types of cone photoreceptors that detect blue, green or red light.
- Our eyes send signals to our brain, and our brain interprets what the picture looks like.
- Some people have color blindness, or color vision deficiency, and might see colors differently than most people. It’s more common in boys than it is in girls.
- Scientists say humans can see millions of distinct colors with our eyes.
- There is no limit to the number of colors because you can always combine colors to get new colors.
- The process of how we interpret and think about color is influenced by our own experiences, culture and language.
- Languages and countries have divided up the rainbow differently. For example, in the Russian language, blue isn't one color, it's divided into two. In Korean, they divide green up into two, regular green and kind of yellowy green.
- Lots of languages have added colors over time. In Japanese, blue and green used to be described by the same word. They now have separate words, but that's pretty recent.
- Culturally, some people associate pink with girls and blue with boys. No color is just for a specific gender or kind of person, of course! But in some cultures it’s kind of a trend. But 100 years ago, people thought the completely opposite way about those two colors! Pink was considered a masculine color while blue was thought of as more feminine.
- It just goes to show that there’s no one “right” way to think about colors!
