This video was made possible by Dashlane. Try Dashlane for free on your first device
by heading to Dashlane.com/hai. Hello viewers of Half as Interesting and welcome
to something that will completely worthless for those of you who are colorblind. But to make it up to you, here: I got you
this gift card to Red Lobster. Enjoy! So, colors are basically the way our eyes
interpret certain wavelengths of light. Generally, speaking, we’re only able to
see light that’s between 380 to 700 nanometers in wavelength, with wavelength variations
determining color—for example, we interpret light with a wavelength of 500 nanometers
as blue. There are also a ton of other types of light
that we can’t see—for example, we interpret UV light with a wavelength of 100 nanometers
as skin cancer. As you go to longer wavelengths, there are
infrared, microwave, radar, and radio, and as you go to short wavelengths there are ultraviolet,
x-rays, gamma rays, Ray Romano, and Ray Donovan. But this little band in here is the visible
light spectrum, which you might also recognize by its nickname, Roy G Biv, or its given name
Royland Grindlewald Biverston Jr. Now you may be wondering, “how do my eyes
know which colors are which?” Well, in the back of your eyes, you’ve got
rods and cones. The rods do… something, but the cones do
a different thing: sense color. You’ve actually got three types of cones:
long cones, which are stimulated by red light, medium cones, stimulated by green light, and
short cones, stimulated by blue light. But as you’ve probably noticed, unless you’re
looking at the flag of Karelia or the three worst Power Rangers, you usually see more
than red, green, and blue. That’s because the cones can also pick up
more than just their one pure color, as this graph shows. So when you see yellow, that’s your long,
red cones picking up some stimulation, and the medium green cones picking up some, and
your eyes put that together, and see yellow, which is the wavelength between red and green. But now let’s talk about magenta: that purplish-red
color that you mostly know from T-Mobile ads and the hair of manic pixie dream girls—but
if you look at the light spectrum, you’ll notice that magenta isn’t on it. There is no wavelength for magenta—and that’s
because magenta doesn’t actually exist. You see, magenta is what you get when your
eyes see both red and blue light at the same time, stimulating your long and short cones. Normally, you’d think that when that happens,
your eyes would average the wavelengths, and you would end up in the middle, seeing green. But wait: your eyes know you aren’t seeing
green, because your green cones aren’t being stimulated. But we had to see something, so our eyes panicked
and just made up magenta. That’s right: magenta is just like your
girlfriend who goes to another school—it’s a figment of your imagination. But magenta is actually one of the least interesting
pieces of color confusion out there, because even though there’s no wavelength for it,
we still see magenta all the time. The weirder, cooler, spookier side of color
theory comes via so-called impossible colors: colors that theoretically exist, but that
we can’t usually see. There are four main types of impossible colors:
the first is hyperbolic colors. Let’s take, for example, hyperbolic green,
which surprisingly is not a new weed brand, but instead an impossibly green color. You see, because of overlaps in what wavelengths
our cones can pick up, our green cones can never be stimulated on their own: there will
always be some stimulation of either red or blue cones. But, if you were somehow able to just stimulate
the green cones, you would see hyperbolic green: a green greener than any green that’s
ever greened. And there is actually a way to trick yourself
into seeing hyperbolic green: take magic mushrooms. Wait no, that’s not right: I meant, afterimages. You see, if you stare at magenta for a long
time, your red and blue cones get fatigued, so when you look away, you’ll see a green
afterimage, because magenta is the opposite of green. If you then looked immediately at green, the
green afterimage will combine with the green you’re looking at and you’ll see hyperbolic
green. Go ahead, try it. Seriously. Put your face way too close to the screen,
the way you were always told not to. Now, stare at the magenta. Keep staring. Keeep staring. Don’t get distracted by the little clown
in the corner of the screen. Okay, now look at the green! Diiiid it look extra green? Hopefully it did, but if not, you should do
what I do whenever anything goes wrong and blame my animators. Second up are stygian colors: colors that
are an impossible combination of dark and saturated. For example, stygian blue is seen as just
as dark as black, but also as blue, which is normally impossible, because you know,
the only thing that’s as dark as black is, well, black. To see stygian blue, stare at this yellow,
then at black, but this time I’m gonna make you pause the video to do it, because we’ve
got ads to get to. Third are self-luminous colors, which are
colors that appear impossibly bright. Whatever color you stare at first, you’ll
see the self-luminous version of its opposite. So, if you stare at this green, then at white,
you’ll see self-luminous red. Or this yellow, then white, and you’ll see
self-luminous blue. If you stare at this Luigi, then white, you’ll
see self-luminous Waluigi. Finally, there are impossible combination
colors. According to the theory of opponent-process,
you cannot see any colors that “could be described as a combination of two colors on
opposite sides of the color wheel.” Basically, that’s fancy science talk for
that you can see reddish-yellow, which is basically orange, but you can’t see reddish-green. If you mix red and green light, you see yellow,
if you mix red and green paint, you see brown. Except that maybe you can see reddish-green
if you look at this and cross your eyes to make them overlap. Did you see it? Okay, now, if you keep your eyes crossed you
should see something else impossible… … a great deal on how to get a free 30-days
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Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but at 0:50 radar waves are mentioned as a form of light waves. Surely RADAR is just a system that makes use of micro and radio waves, not a type of wave in itself
This ones quite annoying bevause it would take two seconds to extend the colors, and the nebula mobile player is annoying for pausing and speed control
i can't watch this because of the network admin enforcing restricted mode so could you please download and upload the video?