Magenta Ain't A Colour
Disturbing, yet cool. Biotele.com
A
beam of white light is made up of all the colours in the spectrum. The
range extends from red through to violet, with orange, yellow, green
and blue in between. But there is one colour that is notable by its absence.
beam of white light is made up of all the colours in the spectrum. The
range extends from red through to violet, with orange, yellow, green
and blue in between. But there is one colour that is notable by its absence.
![](data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,<svg height="179px" width="407px" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" version="1.1"/>)
Pink (or magenta, to use its official name) simply isn’t there. But if
pink isn’t in the light spectrum, how come we can see it?
pink isn’t in the light spectrum, how come we can see it?
Here’s an experiment you can try: stare at
the pink circle below for about one minute, then look over at the blank
white space next to the image. What do you see? You should see an
afterimage. What colour is it?
![](data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,<svg height="157px" width="311px" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" version="1.1"/>)
![](data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,<svg height="400px" width="1000px" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" version="1.1"/>)
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View Comments
Note that brown isn't there, and neither are any of the metallic colors. What you see in the spectrum is the selected primary colors, and their secondary colors. But there are a whole group of tertiary (and more) colors beyond these.
The mixing of pigments is called subtractive color mixing (since pigments don't make light, they reflect it), and light is additive color mixing. I had an old Fisher Scientific kit that taught me this back in the 70s :)
Okay, after reading those comments I will remove the "science" tag from this post and add an "amusing" tag. I jumped on the memewagon too quickly on this one.
Of course pink exists... I've made it, in pigment, by mixing red and white paint. But light is not the same thing as pigment.
And I know from HTML color codes that blue is #00F, red is #F00, and magenta is #F0F -- red light plus blue light.
It did seem interesting ... but I wouldn't be too disturbed until after you check out the comments at reddit.