Looney Labs Icehouse Mailing list Archive

["Tom Eigelsbach" <eigelsbach@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 6/5/07, Carol Townsend <carol.townsend@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 6/5/07, Tom Eigelsbach <eigelsbach@xxxxxxxxx > wrote:

Yeah -- Clear doesn't belong in the spectrum, and if it did, I'd place it between Red and Purple, just because in physics, they are the two ends of the visible spectrum, as the wee little wavicles go like so:

• Purple (380-435nm)
• Blue (435-500 nm)
• Cyan (500-520 nm)
• Green (520-565 nm)
• Yellow (565- 590 nm)
• Orange (590-625 nm)
• Red (625-740 nm)

By this logic, then clear goes perfectly in the middle.

Clear light (i.e., what most call "white light" but what isn't white at all - just look around.... do you see white color beams streaming around you??  No... there's nothing... the light is Clear)  is a combination of all the colors of the spectrum put back together again.

 

In other words: an average.

So, the average of all those various wavelengths is:
Clear (560)    { [380 + 740] / 2 }

 

Zoltar:  No way, Earthling!  Maybe you might stick White in the middle, but not Clear.  Clear is invisible, so that it belongs on the ends of your limited human visible spectrum, so that infrared and ultraviolet are clear.  Hence clear belongs at the end, not in the middle, whereas White is the sum of all the colors. 

 

And there are no beams, there are electric fields which create magnetic fields, which in turn create electric fields, and like a slinky they flip-flops back and forth recreate each other at the speed of light.  The 'color' has to do with what wavelengths are not absorbed by the object of off which the light reflects. 

 

 

OK... so it's "technically" green.  But a very wimpy green and a mostly yellow/green - but not yellow yet, so it's clear.

How's that for logic?

Zoltar:  No wonder your species is on the brink of extinction with logic like that -- yellow/green is clear??? 

Remember... I used to teach science to kids.  Lucky that it was mostly bio and chem, with very little physics. 

Zoltar:  Zoltar examine your Earth newspapers and all of them have "horrorscopes", an indicator of the primitive level of your planet's scientific and rational evolution.  So you are an alchemist, eh? 

But yeah - I'd toss out things like this and the kids would get into such great "arguments" with each other trying to prove that clear light doesn't exist, that it's white light... and be so wrapped up in trying to prove their point that they didn't realize they were learning science along the way.  There are days I miss such things.... but then I remember "Parent Teacher Nights" and all the grading I used to have to do.... and I thank the stars (and all their clear light) for my current job. 

 

Zoltar:  In college I took the role of the Flat Earthist and blew away the Copernicans (in my philosophy of science class), as we were only allowed to use the evidence and tools of the century we were studying.

 

Anyway (now just babbling while half asleep at 3 a.m. after having gotten up to go to the bathroom and then having stopped at the computer on the way back to bed...), I was thinking of what Homeworlds would be like for color-blind folks, and how the mapping could go using White, Black, Clear, and Grey.  heh heh heh

Not another color debate!  Aarrrggghhhh!!!  :)  Someone tie up TV Tom now!!  Or at least take away his tie-dye socks and restrict him to only B&W TV for the rest of his life!!

:)
Carol

(hmmm.... Black would obviously correspond to Blue.... darkest shade..... aaahhhrrrhh! He's got me doing it now!!  AAahhhh!  Aaaahhhhh!!  Run now!!)

 

Zoltar:  It is too late for you, Earthlings -- Soon the Zoltarian Fleet will catastrophe your star Sol so that the plague on the Sol-III system does not spread to the rest of the galaxy!   [Insert Evil Overlord laugh here]