Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Speaker 1: Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry and it's
Speaker 1: Stuff you should Know color and technicolor. Yeah, which is
Speaker 1: really something. It's tea technical or yeah. Yeah, imagine what
Speaker 1: it was like back then. Oh, Man debut just melting
Speaker 1: people's eyes out. Bad. Probably good, You're like, wow, how
Speaker 1: are you doing? I'm great. I'm glad to hear that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: how are you going? I'm good. I'm tired, but I'm good.
Speaker 1: I gotta particularly to study. Oh yeah, you get up
Speaker 1: early to make the cheese? What? Oh? You know, it's
Speaker 1: just a saying kind of make Wait wait, who's saying, yeah,
Speaker 1: make the cheese, make the sausage, make the doughnuts, of her,
Speaker 1: make the donuts. You never make the sausage. You don't
Speaker 1: want to see how the sausage just made. Just pick anything.
Speaker 1: Make the cheese. I don't think so. The cheese milk
Speaker 1: a cow. People get up early for that, so I
Speaker 1: guess there's that association. Have you ever milk to cow? No?
Speaker 1: Have you know? I was talking to Emily about that
Speaker 1: the other day because uh. We went horse riding, and
Speaker 1: I'd never ridden a horse before. Oh yeah, it's pretty neat. Huh,
Speaker 1: it's my new favorite thing. Yeah, it was amazing, how
Speaker 1: awesome it was. Did you jump over anything on the horse? No?
Speaker 1: But we like, you know, trotted up a hill. Did
Speaker 1: you shoot a bow and arrow? No? Almost fell off though.
Speaker 1: And yeah when he trotted up the hill, I got
Speaker 1: like kind of loosened saddle, as they say. I was like, whoa, Okay,
Speaker 1: well that's exactly what you should have said, is whoa.
Speaker 1: Well no, he was going uphill, so I had to
Speaker 1: just keep on trucking. Really yeah, I didn't want to
Speaker 1: stop him. Good for you, man, he was carrying a load.
Speaker 1: I felt bad for the horse. I'm sure he was fine,
Speaker 1: Yeah he was all right. Yeah. What was his name? Um? Oh? Man?
Speaker 1: Now I'm kicking myself like a horse because I called
Speaker 1: this horse by his name the whole day and now
Speaker 1: I can't remember Calvin. I thought we'd bonded. I guess
Speaker 1: I was just pretending. That's cool. The horse probably can't
Speaker 1: remember your name either. And he took a big dump
Speaker 1: they do that, right, and then just stopped and I
Speaker 1: was like, what are you stopping for and I was like, oh, oh,
Speaker 1: you're lucky even stop sometimes they just walk and do that. Really,
Speaker 1: all of the ones on our little ride stopped to poop,
Speaker 1: which I thought was maybe I'm confusing them with another
Speaker 1: animal humans just walking poop at the same time. Anyway,
Speaker 1: it was my favorite new thing. I loved it. That's cool, man,
Speaker 1: I felt buried at home. What color was the horse?
Speaker 1: One of the spotted ones, which I love, man. I
Speaker 1: was hoping you're gonna say, like blue or red or
Speaker 1: something easy. You smashed the table. Let's go with blue. Okay, blue,
Speaker 1: It was a blue horse, So allow me to explain
Speaker 1: why your horse appeared blue. Okay, As Newton figured out,
Speaker 1: that horse is not inherently blue. There's nothing inherently blue
Speaker 1: about that horse. It's all in our perception because color
Speaker 1: technically doesn't exist. It exists in our minds. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: the perception of color does exactly. But like an apple
Speaker 1: isn't just there's nothing in the apple that's red, exactly chucking.
Speaker 1: There's nothing in your horse that made it blue. What
Speaker 1: happens is that color is basically our perception of a
Speaker 1: specific wavelength of visible light that's right invisible light is
Speaker 1: just part of the electromagnetic spectrum that includes everything from
Speaker 1: microwaves to radio waves to gamma raise to um ocean waves.
Speaker 1: Not quite, but visible light is part of that wave pools. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: just those things that I said, Ok, so um along
Speaker 1: that spectrum is this very narrow little slice that's visible
Speaker 1: light and invisible light, which we see as like white light, sunlight. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is the presence of the rainbow, which are called
Speaker 1: the spectral colors. On one end, you have the short wavelength,
Speaker 1: which is blue. On the other end, you have the
Speaker 1: h long wavelengths, which is red technically violet. On the
Speaker 1: the other side, well, red has a bunch of different names.
Speaker 1: When you start reading in the color, well, no blue
Speaker 1: on the blue side, it's like starts at violet. But
Speaker 1: we don't perceive it very well. Oh well, I'm talking
Speaker 1: about what humans can see. Yeah, and then everything else
Speaker 1: is in between, right, and what's in what's really in
Speaker 1: the middle, like yellow maybe it seems like yellows kind
Speaker 1: of in the middle. Yeah, we just think you tell me, well,
Speaker 1: on the other end, beyond violet, you've got ultra violet,
Speaker 1: and beyond red you've got infrared. Yeah, these are things
Speaker 1: we can't see. No, we can't. Some animals can, remember
Speaker 1: they think monarch butterflies are able to migrate all the
Speaker 1: way to Mexic co Um using ultra violet detecting ultra violet.
Speaker 1: I remember that. Yeah, man, that was a good episode. Amazing.
Speaker 1: So this, this band of light, this visible spectrum, contains
Speaker 1: the spectral colors which we perceive, right. And for a
Speaker 1: very long time, everybody just thought, well, that apple's red,
Speaker 1: but that horse is blue. That's just how it's born.
Speaker 1: There's nothing that can be done about it. And then,
Speaker 1: like we said, along came Newton, and Newton said, no,
Speaker 1: something weird is going on here. Like you said, color
Speaker 1: doesn't really exist. It's in the eye of the beholder,
Speaker 1: almost literally, right, um. And the reason why an apple
Speaker 1: seems red or your horse seems blue are because of
Speaker 1: natural chemicals found in say the skin of the apple
Speaker 1: or the hide of the horse, that are called pigments.
Speaker 1: So in an apple, specifically, it's anthro cyanins that make
Speaker 1: it red. In in the case of a carrot, it's carotenoids.
Speaker 1: In the case of grass, it's chlorophyll. And these pigments
Speaker 1: had the cape ability of absorbing some wavelengths of light
Speaker 1: and reflecting others back. And the wavelength that it reflects
Speaker 1: back are the colors that we perceive. That's right, And
Speaker 1: that's if it's an object that is opaque. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a big one right there. Apples are pretty opaque. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would say, so that's your Superman maybe yeah, he
Speaker 1: it's invisible see through apple. Oh yeah he can, Candy,
Speaker 1: I get your joke now. So yeah, with an opaque
Speaker 1: object where light um doesn't pass all the way through,
Speaker 1: some lights reflected back. So in the case of anthra cyanons,
Speaker 1: this pigment absorbs all the other wavelengths of light except red,
Speaker 1: and it reflects red back, and so red is reflected back.
Speaker 1: So what you see when you look at this apple
Speaker 1: with all the red light reflecting back at you is
Speaker 1: a red apple. That's how we perceive color in the
Speaker 1: world around us naturally. And if it's transparent, uh, it's
Speaker 1: not reflecting that light but transmitting it. So it depends
Speaker 1: on the color of light that's passing through it instead
Speaker 1: of reflecting back to you. And again it's that chemical makeup.
Speaker 1: It's it operates in sort of the same way. Um.
Speaker 1: It's just not like in an apple skin. Let's say, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: But it all comes to do It comes down to
Speaker 1: basically pigments or whatever natural chemical or mineral that either
Speaker 1: absorbs or reflects certain wavelengths of light. That's right. So
Speaker 1: here's the thing, though, Chuck, Like that can happen all
Speaker 1: day long, and as long as there's not a human
Speaker 1: or a monkey, or a dolphin or a dog, because
Speaker 1: dogs are not color blind, that's right. They see different
Speaker 1: colors than we do, but they're not color blind. I
Speaker 1: always wonder how they do this tests ah, animals. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a good question. I mean, I'm sure it's pretty
Speaker 1: easy to find out, but I just didn't have time
Speaker 1: to look into it. I'm with you. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: like in massive black hole of information. Like you could
Speaker 1: just keep going and going and going with colors such
Speaker 1: a huge expansive topic that we could just do nothing
Speaker 1: but color episodes for the next several months if we
Speaker 1: wanted to do do. You want to kill me, I may
Speaker 1: not make it through today's. So you're doing great. This
Speaker 1: is fine. This is great, Chuck. It is a very
Speaker 1: like big subject, Yes it is, man, We're just we're
Speaker 1: providing a brief overview of it. That's right. So um,
Speaker 1: Like I was saying, things can reflect color all the time,
Speaker 1: but as long as there's not something there to perceive it,
Speaker 1: is there any Is there really any color there? Well
Speaker 1: that's a philosophical question, but there's an answer to it,
Speaker 1: and the answer is no. If the tree falls in
Speaker 1: the woods and no one's around to here, it doesn't
Speaker 1: make annoyance. No. Actually, my my opinion on that one
Speaker 1: is yes, okay, but with color, Um, yeah, it doesn't
Speaker 1: exist without being perceived. I think it sound to me
Speaker 1: is different things. It's a bit of the brain melter.
Speaker 1: But I see what you're saying. Okay. So um. That
Speaker 1: leads you to the question of how do we see color?
Speaker 1: And that wasn't figured out until the eighteenth century, and
Speaker 1: it wasn't proven, I think, until the sixties. And there
Speaker 1: were a pair of guys who were a dynamic duo
Speaker 1: if I've ever heard of one before, And what were
Speaker 1: their names? Well, Thomas Young he was I thought he
Speaker 1: was kind of the main guy. Had never heard of
Speaker 1: the other guy, Herman von Helmholtz. Yeah, Thomas Young. Um.
Speaker 1: What I read was that he was the first to
Speaker 1: propose the trichromatic theory basically that we see everything through red, green,
Speaker 1: and blue channels because that's how our eyes pick up
Speaker 1: on color. Yeah, because we have specialized cells in our
Speaker 1: eyes called cones, right, and I think we have something like, um,
Speaker 1: a hundred million or some ridiculous amount of rods. And
Speaker 1: rods are the things that we see in like fine detail,
Speaker 1: black and white typically, right, cones are color perceiving sy
Speaker 1: and each cell is specialized. You either attuned to wavelengths
Speaker 1: that red, green, or blue. Yeah, you have way more
Speaker 1: rods than cones, about a hundred and twenty million rods
Speaker 1: in each eye and only only about six million cones
Speaker 1: in each eye. And those cones are concentrated mostly in
Speaker 1: the front of your retina in the middle, right, which
Speaker 1: is why you don't see color periphetally quite as well,
Speaker 1: that's right. So, um, these cells are attuned to different wavelengths, right,
Speaker 1: The long wavelengths are red, medium is green, and short
Speaker 1: is blue. Like you said medium was yellow. No, that's
Speaker 1: in the middle, okay, right, so medium is not in
Speaker 1: the middle, well as far as our RGB goes, okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so with these cells, chuck, if you're looking at
Speaker 1: your blue horse. What was his name, Calvin the Blue Horse.
Speaker 1: So if you're looking at Calvin the Blue Horse, you're
Speaker 1: getting a lot of information on from short wavelength light,
Speaker 1: not so much at the longer medium wavelengths, right, And
Speaker 1: so there's probably a little bit it's not a true
Speaker 1: blue horse, right, which would mean that it was a
Speaker 1: totally saturated blue, which is only that blue wavelength, true
Speaker 1: blue wavelength. Coming to your eyes, there's probably a little
Speaker 1: bit of green, a little bit of red. And so
Speaker 1: all the cones in your eyes are getting all of
Speaker 1: this information at once, and they're reporting to your brain
Speaker 1: via electrical impulses about the quality of the wavelengths of
Speaker 1: light that they're getting. And so your brain takes it
Speaker 1: and basically becomes a color mixer and creates the color
Speaker 1: blue that you're seeing. Calvin ass that's how we detect color.
Speaker 1: And from the R and the G and the B
Speaker 1: you can put together. Supposedly, the Commission on Illumination, a
Speaker 1: European Commission on illumination back in one determined that humans
Speaker 1: can see something like two point three eight million colors. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's such a hundred million, now, is it? Because I've
Speaker 1: seen all over the place in this findings are the
Speaker 1: ones that people say, this has the best science behind it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: now I'm sorry. Ten million Okay. The other thing about
Speaker 1: the c I E Is that people say, well, this
Speaker 1: was only under certain types of illumination. I think three
Speaker 1: different types of illumination, so it is entirely possible if
Speaker 1: you change the intensity or whatever, you're going to have
Speaker 1: brand new colors. So ten millions reasonable. That's a lot
Speaker 1: of colors that we can see all from the red,
Speaker 1: the green, and the blue cones coming together and your
Speaker 1: brain adjusting them and seeing, oh, well that's um burnt sienna.
Speaker 1: Did you Yeah, this sort of the go to joke color, right,
Speaker 1: it is a pretty jokey color. It's a good one.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, it's pretty amazing. Ten million colors, or let's
Speaker 1: say it's two million, if you're going by you know,
Speaker 1: naming convention. Shall we talk about some of the characteristics
Speaker 1: of color. Yeah, but let's take a break first. It
Speaker 1: is getting heavy, all right, so if you um actually
Speaker 1: you can do this on your modern television as well.
Speaker 1: But it seemed like most TVs now kind of come
Speaker 1: fairly set up. But in the old days, when you
Speaker 1: have those little wheels to try and get that color right.
Speaker 1: It was. You know, you might have noticed things that
Speaker 1: said hugh and intensity or value or tone and all
Speaker 1: that stuff. Those are all color characteristics, and hugh specifically
Speaker 1: is um. I mean, that's basically what the color is.
Speaker 1: It's not the lightness of the darkness. It's you know,
Speaker 1: it's the greenness or the redness or the blueness that's
Speaker 1: the hue. Yeah, it's it's what you can interchange that
Speaker 1: word with color. Yeah, exactly. UM. I like how they
Speaker 1: refer to as the identity of a color sounds kind
Speaker 1: of personal. Uh. The intensity is how pure it is
Speaker 1: so um. Like we said, most colors are mixes, you know,
Speaker 1: they bleed one way or the other on the wavelength.
Speaker 1: But in its purest form a single wavelength um, which
Speaker 1: is really rare, that would be the purity or the
Speaker 1: intensity of the color. Um. You're not gonna see that
Speaker 1: very often though. No, And I was wondering, like, that's
Speaker 1: pretty cool. There's some physics labs somewhere that can produce
Speaker 1: pure saturated green, like unadulterated green or unadulterated blue. There
Speaker 1: is there has to be. Yeah, probably that is gotta
Speaker 1: be really something to see to know you're looking at green,
Speaker 1: like think but green, I would like to see that sometime. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I have, UM, I'm not color blind, but I
Speaker 1: have a more difficult time picking out other cues in
Speaker 1: a color, whereas Emily is really good, like when picking
Speaker 1: out paint colors, like that gray has this and this
Speaker 1: and this and it, and I'm like, really like I
Speaker 1: see gray. Well, supposedly a lot of people have a
Speaker 1: color deficiency. I might have a slight color deficiency, and
Speaker 1: a lot of people don't realize that. Well, yeah, so
Speaker 1: a lot of people don't realize that they think that
Speaker 1: this is this color just looks like this and thinks
Speaker 1: everybody sees it that way and this in the case,
Speaker 1: and then it comes from a conversation where they're like, well,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, what do you mean you see a
Speaker 1: distinction between those? Well, but yeah, but in my case,
Speaker 1: it's hues. It's not like I see a completely different
Speaker 1: color or you know, black or everything just looks gray.
Speaker 1: I did UM a brain stuff on color blindness. It
Speaker 1: is pretty interesting. Yeah. I went to UM research that
Speaker 1: one time for a show, and it would just like
Speaker 1: bent in my mind so much. I'd quietly file it away,
Speaker 1: so I'm sure you'll pick it next week. Color blindness, Yeah, Um.
Speaker 1: Value is the lightness or darkness of a color, and
Speaker 1: that's basically has to do with light. Um, the energy
Speaker 1: of the light that makes it up. Yeah, and the
Speaker 1: value is um, so he was. There's really just kind
Speaker 1: of a finite, very finite number of colors of hues, right. Um.
Speaker 1: And you think of like primary colors, which we'll talk
Speaker 1: about soon. Um. But when you adjust something, when you
Speaker 1: adjust them the value of it, that just creates a
Speaker 1: whole new range of colors. So if you add a
Speaker 1: little black to a color, what you're doing is shading it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: If you add white, you are creating a tint. And
Speaker 1: then if you add black and white gray, you're toning it. Yeah. Right,
Speaker 1: And I think people interchange those words without understanding what
Speaker 1: they mean. Yeah, but they are definite distinct things, and
Speaker 1: um that we should probably say. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: really neat sights on the internet. Pantone is a really
Speaker 1: good one, um, where you can go look at color
Speaker 1: wheels and things like that and see the distinction between
Speaker 1: these things and be like, oh, you mean pastels. That's
Speaker 1: another word for a tone. Yeah, And it's a lot
Speaker 1: of people get really get into it because it's the
Speaker 1: basis of printing and art and photography, and like every
Speaker 1: every sort of art form, well not every art form,
Speaker 1: but many art forms boil down to color. So if
Speaker 1: you go to art school, you're gonna study color pretty deeply. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, and one of the things you're gonna study
Speaker 1: is color theory. And color theory is based on the
Speaker 1: idea that certain colors can contrast one another, certain colors
Speaker 1: complement one another, certain colors should never be used together.
Speaker 1: And not that it's just you know, um, your instructor
Speaker 1: says saying these colors don't go together. It's not just
Speaker 1: search his opinion. These are objective facts as far as
Speaker 1: color theory goes, and it's all based on um. These
Speaker 1: the idea that all colors fall into one of two categories.
Speaker 1: You have additive colors and subtractive colors. Yeah, and there's
Speaker 1: a couple of I mean, there's two distinct applications for
Speaker 1: both of these. If you're talking about a computer screen
Speaker 1: or or a television, that's that's using light, so it's additive. Um.
Speaker 1: If you're talking about paint or photography, that's subtractive, right,
Speaker 1: So you can think of it this way. With additive colors,
Speaker 1: you're starting with black and you're adding light to it,
Speaker 1: and ultimately, when you add all these additive colors together,
Speaker 1: you're going to have white. With subtractive colors, you start
Speaker 1: with white, and when you add all these colors together,
Speaker 1: you're ultimately going to have black. And they subtract by
Speaker 1: absorbing one another's colors. Yeah, that's another color mind bender
Speaker 1: two because with subtract active color, you're still adding colors,
Speaker 1: but it's not additive, right to wrap your head around that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but there's there's subtracting wavelengths by combining colors and absorbing them, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it takes a hue out. So a really good example
Speaker 1: of subtractive colors is if you take um cyane. Cyan
Speaker 1: absorbs orange red, right, So if you take cyane and
Speaker 1: you mix it with yellow, you produce green. And the
Speaker 1: reason that cyane and yellow produced green, it's because the
Speaker 1: cyane absorbs the red light and the yellow light. The
Speaker 1: yellow absorbs blue violet, and so the only color that's
Speaker 1: not subtracted or absorbed is green. So green is produced
Speaker 1: from these other pigments absorbing all the other wavelengths, and
Speaker 1: with an additive coloring, additive pigments, it's it's quite the opposite.
Speaker 1: You have um light combining to form new colors. Rather
Speaker 1: than absorbing, you're adding to it. Yeah, and like the
Speaker 1: apple is an example, like we said earlier, of a
Speaker 1: subtractive color system um and again, like a TV screen
Speaker 1: would be additive. I think we I think we got that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it is mine bending a little bit. Some
Speaker 1: of the stuff, you know, I have to read like
Speaker 1: ten times and then it sinks in. But the the
Speaker 1: reason that all colors can be turned into either additive
Speaker 1: primaries or subtractive primaries is that these are the six colors.
Speaker 1: Of these they're the six spectral colors. They're the rainbow colors, right,
Speaker 1: So additive primaries are what red, green, and blue the
Speaker 1: correct Yeah, and then the subtractive colors are cyan yellow
Speaker 1: and um magenta ye I was gonna say magenta. They're
Speaker 1: almost like bizarro colors. They're the bizarro world. Primary colors.
Speaker 1: When you think of primary colors, you think of like
Speaker 1: the the what red, yellow, and blue, because ye, red, yellow,
Speaker 1: and blue were the traditional primaries and they still are.
Speaker 1: But um when it comes to like painting and printing.
Speaker 1: They've been replaced with cyan, magenta, yellow and black. K. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when you go to your clubhouse printer, Yeah, that's what
Speaker 1: you're gonna be seeing C M K. Or you can
Speaker 1: select r G B as well, red, green and blue.
Speaker 1: So Crosby stills Nash and Young, right or Crosby Stills
Speaker 1: in Nash. Yeah. Okay, that's the difference. That's a good
Speaker 1: rule of thumb. Man. All right, So we mentioned primary
Speaker 1: colors just a second ago, and then we have our
Speaker 1: secondary colors, green, orange, and purple hues would you get
Speaker 1: from mixing the primary colors, and then you have something
Speaker 1: called tertiary colors, which is this furthering the color hues
Speaker 1: by mixing primary colors with secondary colors. Right, So the
Speaker 1: six tertiary colors and the two sets of primary colors
Speaker 1: or the six secondary colors, I think in the two
Speaker 1: sets of primary colors form the color wheelers twelve colors
Speaker 1: in the color wheel, and tertiary colors are the ones
Speaker 1: that you'll hear like blue, green or red violet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like literally named the two colors, and color naming
Speaker 1: is another rabbit hole that you can go down. There's
Speaker 1: a site. Um man, I wish I'd written it down,
Speaker 1: but it's if you type in like who names colors
Speaker 1: or color naming or something like that in Google, like
Speaker 1: one of the one of the first page entries is
Speaker 1: the site that you go through and um, it shows
Speaker 1: you different colors and you write what you would name
Speaker 1: that color? Interesting, butter yellow or something like that, right,
Speaker 1: and the whole well that was the as far as
Speaker 1: I got. Mike Well, I would call it butter yellow.
Speaker 1: Hungry had other things to do. But um, you can
Speaker 1: go through and just I think it's like two enter
Speaker 1: twenty different shades that they show you, colors that they
Speaker 1: show you, and the the the whole purpose of all
Speaker 1: this is to find some sort of commonality to create
Speaker 1: universal A universal naming convention for colors makes um because
Speaker 1: you know, there is a lot of distinction among languages
Speaker 1: for naming colors. But at least one study that I
Speaker 1: found decided that all colors universally for societies that do
Speaker 1: recognize individual colors, rather than these are just warm colors
Speaker 1: and these are cool colors, which is universal. Um. The
Speaker 1: more primary the color, the shorter and easier to remember
Speaker 1: the name of it. Is like across culture, so not
Speaker 1: all cultures will call it blue. But what a culture
Speaker 1: is going to have like another like short monosyllabic name
Speaker 1: for that color, for the same thing that we would
Speaker 1: call blue. That's pretty interesting just because it's easier to understand.
Speaker 1: It's just it's basic, like colors appear to be basic universally.
Speaker 1: All right, I think we should take another break and
Speaker 1: maybe come back and talk a little bit about how
Speaker 1: colors can complement each other and live in harmony and
Speaker 1: what that all means to us. Okay, all right, we're
Speaker 1: back were Uh So we talked about the different uh
Speaker 1: primary color, secondary, and tertiary. And there's also something called
Speaker 1: complementary colors, which are basically contrasting colors that make a
Speaker 1: neutral color when put together, and they are really far
Speaker 1: apart and hugh as far apart as they can be.
Speaker 1: And there if you look at the color wheel there
Speaker 1: on the complete opposite side from one another, right um.
Speaker 1: And when you place them next to each other, then
Speaker 1: their hue is like, uh, I guess it's just more
Speaker 1: robust looking. Yeah, because they complement one another, right um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: complimentary doesn't necessarily mean like, oh, they look great together.
Speaker 1: Under all circumstances. So, um, some complementary colors like red
Speaker 1: and green, if you play them next to each other
Speaker 1: in the same intensity and the same size, it's another one.
Speaker 1: You are going to have what's called an eyesore. I
Speaker 1: have a shirt like that. It's just too much equal
Speaker 1: amounts of bright red and bright green. Trying to think
Speaker 1: of that shirt. It's just a Christmas shirt? Is it retired? Well,
Speaker 1: it's it's a holiday shirt. Um. But the whole point
Speaker 1: of having colors and using colors together isn't just like, well,
Speaker 1: these two are opposite the color wheel, so I'm gonna
Speaker 1: use them in equal amounts and equal intensity and everything
Speaker 1: will be right. You have to achieve what's called color harmony. Um.
Speaker 1: And in doing that, you want to choose different um,
Speaker 1: different shades or different tones or different tints, and also
Speaker 1: different amounts at once. So like you're going to use
Speaker 1: a bunch of red and a little bit of green
Speaker 1: as an accent. That would be much more harmonious than
Speaker 1: equal amounts of intense red and green next to each other. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and again this is um. When we say it's not
Speaker 1: a matter of taste, that's like picking something out as
Speaker 1: a matter of taste. But again, these are like scientific rules.
Speaker 1: You can't just throw two colors together and say that
Speaker 1: looks great or that they're harmonious. Um. I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess you could, but you'd be wrong. You would surge
Speaker 1: would be like, you're wrong. This is objective stuff. And
Speaker 1: then with complimentary colors. Getting back to that, there's this
Speaker 1: really cool thing that they bring up called retinal fatigue.
Speaker 1: So you can do a little experiment at home that's
Speaker 1: kind of blows your mind, but it really illustrates how
Speaker 1: color works pretty well. If you look at a bright
Speaker 1: red spot for about a minute, um, your retinas are
Speaker 1: going to soak in all that red, all those cones
Speaker 1: are And then when you go immediately and look at
Speaker 1: a white surface, uh, you're gonna see green briefly, not forever, right,
Speaker 1: And the reason why is because your red cells have
Speaker 1: just been basically overstimulated and they're gonna respond weekly to
Speaker 1: the information that they're getting from that white, right, and
Speaker 1: your blue and green cells are gonna be functioning just fine,
Speaker 1: so they're gonna easily overwhelm your red cells. And so
Speaker 1: what you'll see is this ghost image of like a
Speaker 1: cyan square. Yeah, which is why, uh, and the reason
Speaker 1: why it is because red is the complement of green
Speaker 1: will always be that opposite. It doesn't just like randomly
Speaker 1: pick out a color. I know, And if you start
Speaker 1: adding all this stuff together that there are objectively complementary
Speaker 1: colors that you see when you see too much of
Speaker 1: the opposite one, doesn't it all seem to fit so
Speaker 1: cleanly together that you're almost like, what is going on here? Like?
Speaker 1: What is color? Why do we see color? Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a really good question, and evolutionary biologists have not been
Speaker 1: able to explain it fully. Yeah, I guess I really
Speaker 1: never thought about that because there's well, I mean, there's
Speaker 1: probably some evolutionary benefit, right, like green things are generally
Speaker 1: good to eat. Yeah, but green is also the the
Speaker 1: kind of a universal color for disgust or sickness or illness,
Speaker 1: like you're green because you're green around the gills or
Speaker 1: something like that. Green is often like the color of rot.
Speaker 1: But it's true, I mean, it's both. So how how
Speaker 1: do we evolve to understand the nuanced And I mean clearly,
Speaker 1: if we didn't evolve to see in color so that
Speaker 1: we could do this, we have as a byproduct of it.
Speaker 1: But we can very easily tick off whether something is
Speaker 1: healthy for us dangerous. Um. We we get a lot
Speaker 1: of information about an object in our environments, quality and
Speaker 1: desirability based on its color. It's almost like a shorthand
Speaker 1: that our brains pick up. Yeah, And part of that
Speaker 1: is because we're conditioned after years of using green for
Speaker 1: go and green for safe passage, and like red or
Speaker 1: orange for hazard signs and stop signs. So part of
Speaker 1: that's conditioning. But as far as like going back many
Speaker 1: many years before we made stop signs, I have no idea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, it really makes you wonder. And even like
Speaker 1: the idea that pink is for girls and blue is
Speaker 1: for boys, that's a fairly recent development. Prior to I
Speaker 1: think the early twentieth century, it was the opposite. Did
Speaker 1: we ever do that as a show or didn't? It
Speaker 1: was too short? I think we did, like a video
Speaker 1: one or something. Didn't we maybe I seem to remember that,
Speaker 1: But it was the opposite until like the the interesting Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's interesting totally. Is that's why you rock your pink shirts? Well, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: that's exactly why that action. So getting back to harm
Speaker 1: harmonious colors, uh, if they are side but and This
Speaker 1: is if you're like picking out colors in your house
Speaker 1: or whatever. If you're not very good at it, there
Speaker 1: are a few hard and fast rules. Um, colors that
Speaker 1: are and get your little color wheel out is really handy.
Speaker 1: If they're side by side, Uh, they're gonna harmonize well. Um.
Speaker 1: And like we mentioned, colors directly across from one another.
Speaker 1: Complimentary ones also go well in the right proportions because,
Speaker 1: like you said, the size of it makes a big difference.
Speaker 1: They point out in the article. I don't if you've
Speaker 1: ever seen someone who's like painted their room red, like
Speaker 1: in college, you know, some stupid room hate would do that.
Speaker 1: It's an assault on your senses because you're not used
Speaker 1: to seeing that much red. But maybe an accent wall
Speaker 1: in a shade of red matched with a complimentary color,
Speaker 1: you would want it red and green room though it
Speaker 1: gets green as complimented or red. No, but you could
Speaker 1: conceivably say, um, use the complementary color for like the
Speaker 1: trim or something like that. Yeah, exactly, Um. And then
Speaker 1: tents and shades and tones of the same color are
Speaker 1: always okay together. It's never gonna clash. But um, you're
Speaker 1: just gonna have to mess around with like how much
Speaker 1: of one compared to the other and what places your
Speaker 1: eye Yes, no, and so again Surge is is saying like, no,
Speaker 1: there's objective truth as to complementary colors and harmonious colors,
Speaker 1: but there is also personal preference. And this is kind
Speaker 1: of like the thorn in the side of the whole
Speaker 1: idea of color psychology that people use colors to manipulate
Speaker 1: other people into, like buying a product or whatever. Study
Speaker 1: after study keeps finding that color preferencing color symbolism is
Speaker 1: extremely personal. It's based on past experience, on your upbringing,
Speaker 1: on your culture. Like for example, here in the West
Speaker 1: we wear black from mourning. Yeah, well, in the East,
Speaker 1: white is the color from mourning. So there's a lot
Speaker 1: of culturally bound ideas about color too, which keeps it
Speaker 1: from being like universally symbolic or whatever. But that being said,
Speaker 1: there are some that just from being exposed to it
Speaker 1: time and time again, like a red stoplight that you
Speaker 1: come to um identify symbolically with other stuff. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: colors will also affect everyone differently mood wise, but there
Speaker 1: are some generalities there too. Um Like blue is generally
Speaker 1: a soothing color that will calm you down. Um too
Speaker 1: much though could actually have the opposite effect, like too
Speaker 1: much blue on some people, or can really depress you.
Speaker 1: What blue can I wonder if that's why they say
Speaker 1: you're blue? Yeah? Yeah, I mean think about we describe
Speaker 1: our world like that, green with envy. Blue means you're
Speaker 1: down in the dumps. Red means are angry? Yeah, red
Speaker 1: faced or red neck? Wait, that's different. It's a little different.
Speaker 1: Warm colors, reds and yellows. Um can also lift the
Speaker 1: spirits if you're less excitable. Um. And they say that
Speaker 1: most people want to just strike a balance though, between
Speaker 1: the cool and the warm, right, And that's when it
Speaker 1: comes to like personal preference. Yeah, but the idea behind
Speaker 1: this is that a lot of people don't realize this
Speaker 1: is going on, that they're being affected by color, even
Speaker 1: though they are. That it's on a very unconscious level. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it also depends a lot on light, like how
Speaker 1: much light a room has coming into it, because you're
Speaker 1: gonna because sunlight is different than artificial light, your shirt's
Speaker 1: gonna look at different color outside in the sun as
Speaker 1: it might. Uh. And I remember when we did the
Speaker 1: TV show, there was a lot of um with colors
Speaker 1: and stuff. You know, things would look different outside than
Speaker 1: they would under studio lights. Right. Well, what's neat though,
Speaker 1: is we humans have developed this trick called color constancy, where, um,
Speaker 1: if you look at something, even if it's in the
Speaker 1: shadow or in the sunlight, it should conceivably look like
Speaker 1: different colored things because of the illumination. But to us,
Speaker 1: we're still like, no, that's still green, just because there's
Speaker 1: you know, shadow blocking it now, I still see it
Speaker 1: as green. It doesn't make any sense, and it's kind
Speaker 1: of perplexed. Um. I guess, uh biologists for a while
Speaker 1: trying to figure out what this is, or neurologists, and
Speaker 1: they figured out that yes, it is in the brain. Um.
Speaker 1: And there was this one guy who had some sort
Speaker 1: of brain damage, I think from an electric shock, and
Speaker 1: he also went for all intensive purposes blind but he
Speaker 1: could still see color, but he didn't have color constancy.
Speaker 1: So they figured out that this guy was detecting wavelengths
Speaker 1: of light color even though he couldn't see anything. He
Speaker 1: could see colors still, but color constancy wasn't there. So
Speaker 1: they figured out, well, that means that it's a trick
Speaker 1: of the brain. Very neat, it's very cool um. They
Speaker 1: also ing up in the in the House of Works
Speaker 1: article something. I think it's pretty interesting how certain because
Speaker 1: of conditioning, certain colors can just appear to be wrong.
Speaker 1: Like if you were to pull up and see a
Speaker 1: green stop sign, it would freak you out. Or the
Speaker 1: example the Houston here is if you cracked an egg
Speaker 1: and there was a green egg yolk um, that would
Speaker 1: be really freaky too, because you're just so used to
Speaker 1: that yellow. You know, you'd think, well, this is disease
Speaker 1: or something, yeah, or dr seust you know, uh what
Speaker 1: else you got? Did you look at that thing on
Speaker 1: pigment I did. There's some wacky ways people have made pigments, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean pigment um. As far as making paint in things. Uh, Now,
Speaker 1: they're synthetic, synthetic, you know, like they're synthesizing laboratories, which
Speaker 1: makes sense. But throughout all of history, up until they
Speaker 1: started doing that, they were actual, uh, real things in
Speaker 1: the ground and on the earth that they would grind
Speaker 1: up into powder. Um. In the case of blue, there
Speaker 1: was a semi precious stone called, or there still is
Speaker 1: called Lepis Lazuli that was found all over the place
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan. And that's how they made blue. Um Azure
Speaker 1: or azure right, is a blue mineral of copper. So
Speaker 1: all of them, uh, most of them have a few
Speaker 1: different ways they can make it. Um red. I think
Speaker 1: we've talked about cinnabar before. The mineral is where you
Speaker 1: get vermilion red and carmine. Carmine is bright red and
Speaker 1: that comes from aluminum salt of carminic acid. So it's
Speaker 1: just crazy that they found all these things in the
Speaker 1: world to make. And I know blue is the toughest
Speaker 1: one because you don't see blue very much in nature. Um.
Speaker 1: I think blue is the one you will see least
Speaker 1: in the primary colors as far as nature goes, like
Speaker 1: some insects, but like there's no blue food. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. Blue horses, No, Well, what about mine? My
Speaker 1: favorite was India Yellow, where they would feed cows nothing
Speaker 1: but mango leaves and then collect their urine and then
Speaker 1: boil it down, then filter out the concentrated muck and
Speaker 1: then make balls out of it. And there was the
Speaker 1: basis of your pigment. It's pretty cool stuff. So those
Speaker 1: are just a few. If you really get into pigments,
Speaker 1: and you can like go crazy trying to figure out
Speaker 1: where they all came from. Definitely, And um, I mean again,
Speaker 1: this is like really just the surface of color. There's
Speaker 1: so much to it, and um, I strongly advise you
Speaker 1: to go out and learn more about it. Color it's everywhere.
Speaker 1: How about the one last factoid? Why is the sky blue? Oh,
Speaker 1: it's a good one. Guy's not really blue. No, it
Speaker 1: shouldn't really have any color. But the angle of the
Speaker 1: sun coming down on the upper atmosphere um encounters things
Speaker 1: like water, vapor, and other tiny particles, and they tend
Speaker 1: to scatter blue wavelength light more than the other colors, right,
Speaker 1: so that it's just bouncing around at all points, which
Speaker 1: is why the sky is blue. It's say, like noontime.
Speaker 1: But while the sky is blue at noontime over here,
Speaker 1: it's say sunrise or sunset to the east or the west.
Speaker 1: And since all that blue light is getting scattered over
Speaker 1: you where it's noontime in the in the east of
Speaker 1: the west, those reds and yellows and pinks are making
Speaker 1: it all the way there and the blue is not,
Speaker 1: which is why sunrise and sunset it tends to appear reddish,
Speaker 1: whereas like mid day appears blue yeah, which is it
Speaker 1: makes total sense. And when your kids ask you why
Speaker 1: is the sky blue? You can tell him. You can
Speaker 1: tell them like the real reason you can be like
Speaker 1: color does not actually exist. It's all lie. Good luck
Speaker 1: with that, go to sleep. If you want to know
Speaker 1: more about color, just type that word in your favorite
Speaker 1: search engine or how stuff works. That common and will
Speaker 1: take you on a wild ride. And since I said
Speaker 1: wild ride, it's time for listener mail. Uh. I'm to
Speaker 1: call this something I've never heard of before. Precocious puberty.
Speaker 1: Uh you ever heard of that? Yeah, we talked about it,
Speaker 1: did we early puberty? Okay, did we talk about that?
Speaker 1: I guess this is in girls, So maybe that's why
Speaker 1: got you surprised me. I'm a long time listener, and
Speaker 1: thanks for helping me in my commute every day. Really
Speaker 1: enjoyed and giggled my way through the episode of male puberty. Um,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for mentioning precocious puberty. Well, there you
Speaker 1: have it. I was diagnosed at age two after my
Speaker 1: mom came to wake me before school one day. Now
Speaker 1: before preschool. This is a lady. Uh, And she had
Speaker 1: started her period at two years old, and as you
Speaker 1: can imagine, my mom was terrified. It took a long
Speaker 1: time to get a correct diagnosis since it is pretty rare.
Speaker 1: My treatment started out as daily shots that my mom
Speaker 1: gave me at home UM that then went to weekly, monthly,
Speaker 1: and annually as a year's progressed. I also had intermittent
Speaker 1: stays in the hospital for testing. Poor kid. I know.
Speaker 1: Treatment was stopped when I reached twelve years old, essentially
Speaker 1: pressing play of my puberty that have been on pause
Speaker 1: for almost in years. Let's let's see that's cool treatment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's amazing that they figured out how to
Speaker 1: stall puberty. Yeah, they're like, stay stay, Okay. I have
Speaker 1: only hazy memories of this, of course, as I was
Speaker 1: a child, but I do remember that missing UM shots
Speaker 1: caused quite a bit of pain since my body was
Speaker 1: growing out of control. Essentially never been able to find
Speaker 1: out what the long term effects might be. But I've
Speaker 1: had a pretty decent health into my adult life and
Speaker 1: I'm now thirty one years old. Awesome, So thanks a lot.
Speaker 1: And that is from Lauren in California. Well, thanks a lot. Lauren.
Speaker 1: Appreciate that we love hearing from people with real life
Speaker 1: experiences and stuff we just talk about that's right, you know. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you want to let us know about your real
Speaker 1: life experience, we want to hear it. You can tweet
Speaker 1: to us at s y s K podcast. You can
Speaker 1: join us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know.
Speaker 1: You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast, to
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