4 ms·
Someone told me red is shorter so we see it faster -- is there any biological evidence for this?
by hellbanner 12y ago
Someone told me red is shorter so we see it faster -- is there any biological evidence for this?
- ertdfgcb 12y agoI don't think so, red has a smaller wavelength than the other colors we see, but I don't think that could translate into us seeing it faster (whatever that even means). It's pretty rare to see red in nature that isn't blood or fire, and when you do it's often on dangerous things (like those frogs in the amazon). Maybe red is so striking to us because red things in nature are things we need to pay attention to?
- semaphoreP 12y agoRed actually has a larger wavelength. Red is at ~600 nm, while green and blue are at ~500nm and ~400nm respectively. Red has a lower frequency though.
- soroushjp 12y agoNot sure about the biology, but there is some evidence from physics for this. The speed of light is constant in a vacuum, but different for different wavelengths in a medium. This is why shining white light through a glass prism causes it to disperse into many colors -- they each travel through the medium at slightly different speeds. Interestingly, the refractive index (how much the light slows down in a medium) is higher for larger wavelengths like red in the color spectrum. So technically, red light travels slower than blue or green light in a medium (eg. air, water etc.). Of course I would delays in this would be absolutely tiny compared to delays due to neural processing .... but hey who knows, maybe we can tell the difference!