The Science of Colors

Color is the quality which tangible matters have, which can be seen when light falls on them. A technical definition of color is: "the way the brain interprets the wavelength distribution of the light entering the eye" The phenomenon of color has two aspects; the optical - concerned with the nature of light effects - and the physiological or visual that is, how the human eye sees color.

The famous Indian scientist and Nobel Prize winner, Dr. E. V. Raman has made a thorough analytical study of colors. He says that the objects we see emit or reflect light and that this light enters our eyes making us see those objects in a particular color. Solid objects emit light with short or long wavelengths; the hotter the object the shorter the wavelength emitted. We see the shortest possible wavelengths as blue, the longest as red. Hot or electrically excited gases, consisting of nearly isolated atoms, emit light only at specific wavelengths.

The eye can only see colors when the light is relatively bright; the rods used in poor light see only in black and white. The cones used in color vision are of three kinds, responding to light from the red, green or blue portions of the visible spectrum. The brain adds together the different responses of the different sets of cones and produces the vision of color. The three colors to which the cones of the eye respond to are known as the primary colors of light. By mixing different proportions of these three colors, other colors can be visually stimulated. Equal intensity of all three primary colors produces white. This is known as additive production of color. An example of additive production of colors is pictures we see over the television or computer monitor. Color pigments, on the other, work by transmission or reflection, absorbing light from white and displaying only the remainder. This is known as subtractive production of colors. Examples of subtractive production of colors are printed matters like magazines and color-illustrated books. Most colors are not found in the spectrum. These non-spectral colors can be regarded as intermediaries between the spectral colors and black and white.

Scientific analysis of color tells us that colors owe their existence to light and sight. Without light and sight can we speak of colors'? Beauty in life depends on color combinations based on light and sight.

Colors are important in life. They take away the drabness of things and lend them beauty and verve. Flowers are beautiful because of their color combinations. Nature herself is beautiful and glorious only when we see her green attire studded with a myriad of stars in variegated hues. Winter with its denuded trees and snow-covered plants is dull and drab to us, but spring brings with it the glory and arouses feelings of ecstasy in us.

Colors in nature inspire poets and painters. Description of colors in poetry or the use of them as symbols make poetry sound and read beautiful. No good painting is possible without an admixture of colors suggested to the artist's fertile imagination. Colors have symbolic connotations, too. For example, it is generally believed that green stands for progress, red for revolution, and white for purity. Our predilection for colors is seen in our daily life. It is this predilection that compels us to prefer a color television set or a movie in Eastman Kodak color to a black and white one or to go for dresses and suits with fashionable and pleasing hues.