Beau Lotto: Optical illusions show how we see

One of the best TED talks I’ve seen in recent memory. Sit down and prepare to get a bit of a brain cramp as you are taken through a series of truly awesome optical illusions.

In the process, you will learn a bit about how we perceive the world. In a sense, these tricks show us how our eyes work, but more accurately it shows us how our brains make sense of all that visual information.

You begin with particular wavelengths of light, the purely physical thingness of things. You end with a perception of your surroundings, tricks and all. All the between bits are where the fun lives.

What IS an illusion???

Source: youtube.com

The physics of fluid, revealed in spellbinding color by artist Fabian Oefner. The exotic fluid dynamics of paint splattering off of a rotating drill are captured frozen in time using high-tech flash technology. The whole thing is over in approximately 1/40000th of a second. Check out io9 for a little fluid dynamic explanation and check out more from Oefner here.
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The physics of fluid, revealed in spellbinding color by artist Fabian Oefner. The exotic fluid dynamics of paint splattering off of a rotating drill are captured frozen in time using high-tech flash technology. The whole thing is over in approximately 1/40000th of a second.

Check out io9 for a little fluid dynamic explanation and check out more from Oefner here.

Source: io9.com

What Is “Sky Blue” Anyway? Color Science! In my latest episode on YouTube, you may have seen the “official sky blue” color that popped up. Curious where that came from? Want to use it in your artwork? I converted 475 nm light, the predominant blue wavelength that’s scattered by our atmosphere (and the reason the sky is blue) into hex code (top), and then added in various amounts of white. Depending on how much water vapor and microscopic dust is in the atmosphere, white light gets mixed in with that pure blue. I’ll probably get in trouble for declaring this “official sky blue”, and RGB colorspace isn’t a perfect model of the eye, but I have science on my side, so there! If you’d like to try yourself, check out this wavelength-to-RGB tool based on the color algorithm developed by Dan Bruton. Subscribe to It’s Okay To Be Smart on YouTube and watch the latest episode: “Why Is The Sky Any Color At All?”
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What Is “Sky Blue” Anyway? Color Science!

In my latest episode on YouTube, you may have seen the “official sky blue” color that popped up. Curious where that came from? Want to use it in your artwork?

I converted 475 nm light, the predominant blue wavelength that’s scattered by our atmosphere (and the reason the sky is blue) into hex code (top), and then added in various amounts of white. Depending on how much water vapor and microscopic dust is in the atmosphere, white light gets mixed in with that pure blue.

I’ll probably get in trouble for declaring this “official sky blue”, and RGB colorspace isn’t a perfect model of the eye, but I have science on my side, so there!

If you’d like to try yourself, check out this wavelength-to-RGB tool based on the color algorithm developed by Dan Bruton.

Subscribe to It’s Okay To Be Smart on YouTube and watch the latest episode: “Why Is The Sky Any Color At All?”

How We See Color

One of the most mind-boggling parts of color theory is the observation that two different colors of light, when mixed, can create a new color. For instance, red and green light shining together, like from the pixels of a TV or computer screen, give the perception of yellow. This is a phenomenon called “additive color” mixing, illustrated below:

image

It turns out that the word “perception” is the key there. Different colors of light each have their own characteristic wavelength and the yellow coming from your monitor is still red and green wavelengths traveling simultaneously toward your eye. The perception of yellow, or any “in-between” color, comes from simultaneously activating more than one kind of “cone” color receptor in the back of your eye. See how yellow, which by itself would have a wavelength of around 570 nm, falls between the red and green cone receptor ranges:

That explanation up there is thanks to another great video by the folks at TED Ed. Check out my previous vision posts here, including OK Go and Sesame Street explaining primary colors, a fun test of your ability to tell colors apart, and an exploration of the idea that Vincent Van Gogh may have been colorblind.

Also, XKCD did a really fun color survey to discover what people in different cultures and from different backgrounds called different hues. The results are amazing (below), be sure to read about the whole project here.

image

Source: youtube.com

fastcompany: Last year, the comic/blog XKCD had the Internet examine various colors and name them. They ended up with a sample size of 5,000,000, and designer Stephen Von Worley turned the 2,000 most common responses into a gender-exploring interactive infographic. As it seemingly turns out, men and women call the same colors different names.Hat tip: Flowing Data When a comic becomes a science experiment, this is what happens. And it is awesome.
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fastcompany:

Last year, the comic/blog XKCD had the Internet examine various colors and name them. They ended up with a sample size of 5,000,000, and designer Stephen Von Worley turned the 2,000 most common responses into a gender-exploring interactive infographic. As it seemingly turns out, men and women call the same colors different names.

Hat tip: Flowing Data

When a comic becomes a science experiment, this is what happens. And it is awesome.

(via thenextweb)

Source: fastcompany

Tauba Auerbach’s RGB Colorspace Atlas In nature, color is infinite. Within the range of visible wavelengths (~390-750 nm) there is no limit to the gradients that exist between, say, red and yellow. Between every two wavelengths exists another wavelength, and so on, to infinity. But when printed, using RGB color space as a guide, they can be contained. This is the atlas of all printable colors, in a sense. (via Colossal)
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Tauba Auerbach’s RGB Colorspace Atlas

In nature, color is infinite. Within the range of visible wavelengths (~390-750 nm) there is no limit to the gradients that exist between, say, red and yellow. Between every two wavelengths exists another wavelength, and so on, to infinity.

But when printed, using RGB color space as a guide, they can be contained. This is the atlas of all printable colors, in a sense.

(via Colossal)

Source: thisiscolossal.com