Quote:
Originally posted by XOMichelle
The answer is rooted in physical chemistry. Your blue shirt absorbs every wavelength of color besides blue, and thus the blue light is reflected back to you. Your eyes have special cells that recognize this wavelength of color (and other colors too-- the receptors will observe paris of color) and cause neurons to fire "blue!" to your brain. So the color you see is really just a particular wavelength of light. Does that make sense?
The reason the shirt is blue and not any other color has to do with it's chemical makeup (what kind of electron configuration the molecule has). So, as long as we have functioning color photoreceptors in our eyes (colorblind people don't have functioning color receptors), and our brains are wired to pass on those neuronal signals from photoreceptors, we will all see blue as blue.
There's much more detail to it than that, but I can't really remember. Hope this helps.
-M
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Wow, thanks for that explanation. I am hugely into science, so I know the whole deal, but I still think, "How do they really know?!" You can't see how I see things because that's just impossible. It's the "what if" part of me that makes me wonder.
Thank you for trying to explain though.
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