How Do You Define A Color?

Classical Mechanics Level 1

$\text{Red, Blue, Scarlet, White, Violet, Black}$

According to physicists, how many of the above are not colors?

1 2 3 4 5 Can't say All are colors None of them are colors

1 solution

Nihar Mahajan
Apr 10, 2016

In physics, color is nothing but the light perceived by our eyes with a definite wavelength.However black and white are not colors because they do not have any specific wavelength. Black is nothing but absence of the light which can be perceived by eyes. White is nothing but mixture of all colors and it has wavelengths of all colors but not a specific one.

Thus, white and black are not colors whereas others in the list are colors.

The correspondence of a color to a specific wavelength is called spectral color. White and black are excluded from this definition because they do not have specific wavelengths. White is not defined as a color because it is the sum of all possible colors. Black is not defined as a color because it is the absence of light, and therefore color. In the visual art world, white and black may sometimes be defined as distinct colors. This is different from the concept of spectral color in physics.
So, the answer is 2 .. @Nihar Mahajan nice question !!

sanyam goel - 5 years, 2 months ago

Thanks, Nice piece of information!

Nihar Mahajan - 5 years, 2 months ago

Damn it. I marked $4$ , thinking that the opposite question was asked. Good question!

Shourya Pandey - 5 years, 2 months ago

Actually I myself came to know about it 2 days ago and was flabbergasted by it. Hence, decided to share with everyone here :P

Nihar Mahajan - 5 years, 2 months ago

Huh!...I marked 3 thinking $\text{VIBGYOR}$ .

A Former Brilliant Member - 5 years, 1 month ago

Since I'm not English, just Spanish, I never heard from the scarlet color. So I though, well, black and white aren't colors... Scarlet might be a trap! So I marked 3... Can someone donate Spain to start teaching English the correct way? In 13th grade teenagers are still being teached about house objects as an ironing board, and still they have given only the colors black, blue, red, green, white, grey, orange, brown, yellow, purple, and luckily cian. So please. Help this country, I would have another correct answer 😢😂

Gin's Alive - 5 years, 2 months ago

Nihar very nice explanation.

Atanu Ghosh - 5 years, 2 months ago

How Do You Define A Color?

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