Stuff You Should Know - How Color Works

Episode Date: May 21, 2015

Science doesn't have a good explanation for why we sense color, yet it is everywhere and affecting us all the time. But why should minutely different wavelengths of light have such an impact on our moods and motivations? Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey guys, it's Chikis from Chikis and Chill podcast. And I want to tell you about a really exciting episode. We're going to be talking

to Nancy Rodriguez from Netflix's Love is Blind season three. Looking back at your experience, were there any red flags that you think you missed? What I saw as a weakness of his, I wanted to embrace the way I thought of it was whatever love I have from you is extra for me. Like I already love myself enough. Do I need you to validate me as a partner? Yes. Is it required for me to feel good about myself? No. Listen to Chikis and Chill on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W, Chuck Bryant, and Jerry. And it's Stuff You Should Know. Colors. And Technicolor. Yeah. Which is really something to see. Technicolor?

Yeah. Yeah. I imagine what it was like back then. Oh man. I'll debut. Just melting people's eyes out there. Probably did. You're like, wow. How you doing? I'm great. I'm glad to hear that. Yeah. How are you? I'm good. I'm tired, but I'm good. Yeah. I got a particularly study. Oh yeah? Uh-huh. Had to get up early to make the cheese. Yeah. What? No, you know, it's just a saying. Got to make. Wait, wait. Who's saying? Yeah, make the cheese, make the sausage, make the doughnuts. I've heard make the doughnuts. You've never heard make the sausage? I've heard you don't want to see how the sausage is made. Yeah. Just pick anything. Make the cheese. I don't think so. Cut the cheese. Milk and cow. People get up early for that, so I guess there's that association.

Have you ever milked a cow? No. Have you? No. I was talking to Emily about that the other day, because we went horse riding, and I'd never ridden a horse before. Oh yeah, it's pretty neat, huh? It's my new favorite thing. Yeah. It was amazing how awesome it was. Did you jump over anything on the horse? No, but we like, you know, trotted up a hill. Did you shoot a bow and arrow? No, I almost fell off, though. Did you? Yeah, when he trotted up the hill, I got kind of loose and saddle, as they say. I was like, whoa, okay. Well, that's exactly what you should have said, as well. Well, no, he was going uphill, so I had to just keep on trucking. Really? Yeah, I didn't want to stop him. Good for you, man. He was carrying a load. I felt bad for the horse.

I'm sure he was fine. Yeah, he was all right. Yeah. What was his name? Oh, man, now I'm kicking myself. Like a horse? Because I called this horse by his name the whole day, and now I can't remember. Calvin? I thought we'd bonded. I guess I was just pretending. That's cool. The horse probably can't remember your name either. Yeah, and he took a big dump. They do that. Right, and then just stopped, and I was like, what are you stopping for? And I was like, oh. Oh, you're lucky. Even stop. Sometimes they just walk and do that. Oh, really? All of the ones on our little ride stopped to poop, which I thought was... Maybe I'm confusing them with another animal. Humans? Just walking poop at the same time. Anyway, it was my favorite

new thing. I loved it. That's cool, man. I felt very at home. What color was the horse? One of the spotted ones, which I love. Man, I was hoping you were going to say like blue or red or something easy. Did you smash the table? Let's go with blue. Okay. Blue? It was a blue horse. So allow me to explain why your horse appeared blue. Okay. As Newton figured out, that horse was not inherently blue. There's nothing inherently blue about that horse. Yeah. It's all in our perception. Yeah, it's because color technically doesn't exist. It exists in our minds. Well, yeah, the perception of color does. Exactly. But like an apple isn't just... There's nothing in the apple that's red. Exactly, Chuck. And there's nothing in your horse that made it blue. No. What happens is that color

is basically our perception of a specific wavelength of visible light. That's right. And visible light is just part of the electromagnetic spectrum that includes everything from microwaves to radio waves to gamma rays to ocean waves. Not quite, but visible light is part of that. Wave pools? No. No. Just those things that I said. Okay. So along that spectrum is this very narrow little slice that's visible light. And invisible light, which we see as like white light, sunlight. Yeah. It is the presence of the rainbow, which are called the spectral colors. That's right. On one end, you have the short wavelength, which is blue. On the other end, you have the long wavelengths, which is red. Technically, violet on the other side. Well,

red has a bunch of different names when you start reading into color. Well, no, blue on the blue side. It starts at violet, but we don't perceive it very well. Oh, well, I'm talking about what humans can see. Right. Yeah. And then everything else is in between. Right. And what's really in the middle? Like yellow, maybe? Seems like yellow is kind of in the middle. Yeah. What do you think? You tell me. Well, on the other end, beyond violet, you've got ultraviolet. And beyond red, you've got infrared. Yeah. These are things we can't see. No, we can't. Some animals can remember, they think monarch butterflies are able to migrate all the way to Mexico using ultraviolet, detecting ultraviolet light. Remember that? Oh, yeah. That was a good episode. Pretty amazing.

So this, this band of light, this visible spectrum contains the spectral colors, which we perceive, right? That's right. And for a very long time, everybody just thought, well, that apple's red or that horse is blue. That's just how it's born. There's nothing that can be done about it. Yeah. And then like we said, along came Newton and Newton said, no, something weird's going on here. Like you said, color doesn't really exist. It's in the eye of the beholder, almost literally. Yeah. Right. And the reason why an apple seems red or your horse seems blue are because of natural chemicals found in, say, the skin of the apple or the hide of the horse that are called pigments. Yeah. So in an apple specifically, it's anthracyanins that make it

red. Yes. In the case of a carrot, it's carotenoids. In the case of grass, it's chlorophyll. And these pigments have the capability of absorbing some wavelengths of light and reflecting others back. And the wavelength that it reflects back are the colors that we perceive. That's right. And that's if it's an object that is opaque. Well, yeah, that's a big one right there. Yeah. Apples are pretty opaque. Yeah, I would say so. That's your superman, maybe. Yeah. He eats invisible see-through apples. You can see right through that. Oh yeah, he can candy. I get your joke now. So yeah, with an opaque object where light doesn't pass all the way through, some lights reflect it back. So in the case of anthracyanins, this pigment absorbs

all the other wavelengths of light except red and it reflects red back. That's right. And so red is reflected back. So what you see when you look at this apple with all the red light reflecting back at you is a red apple. That's right. That's how we perceive color in the world around us naturally. Yeah. And if it's transparent, it's not reflecting that light but transmitting it. So it depends on the color of light that's passing through it instead of reflecting back to you. Yes. And again, it's that chemical makeup. It operates in sort of the same way. Right. It's just not like in an apple skin, let's say. Yeah, exactly. But it all comes down to basically pigments or whatever natural chemical or mineral that either absorbs or reflects certain wavelengths of light. That's

right. So here's the thing though Chuck, like that can happen all day long. And as long as there's not a human or a monkey or a dolphin or a dog because dogs are not colorblind. That's right. They see different colors than we do but they're not colorblind. I always wonder how they do this test. Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, I'm sure it's pretty easy to find out but I just didn't have time to look into it. I'm with you. Yeah, this is like a massive black hole of information. Like you could just keep going and going and going with colors. Such a huge expansive topic. Yeah. That we could just do nothing but color episodes for the next several months if we wanted to. Do you want to? Kill me. I may not make it through today's. So you're doing great. This is fine.

This is great Chuck. It is a very big subject. Yes, it is. Man, we're providing a brief overview of it. That's right. So like I was saying, things can reflect color all the time but as long as there's not something there to perceive it, is there really any color there? Well, that's a philosophical question. But there's an answer to it and the answer is no. If the tree falls in the woods and no one's around to hear it, does it make a noise? No. Actually, my opinion on that one is yes. Okay. But with color, yeah, it doesn't exist without being perceived, I think. Sound to me is different than color. It's a bit of a brain melter but I see what you're saying. Okay. So that leads you to the question of

how do we see color? And that wasn't figured out until the 18th century and it wasn't proven, I think, until the 60s. And there were a pair of guys who were a dynamic duo if I've ever heard of one before. And what were their names? Well, Thomas Young, I thought he was kind of the main guy. I had never heard of the other guy. Herman von Helmholtz? Yeah. Thomas Young, what I read was that he was the first to propose the trichromatic theory. Basically, that we see everything through red, green, and blue channels because that's how our eyes pick up on color. Yeah, because we have specialized cells in our eyes called cones, right? Yeah. I think we have something like 100 million or some ridiculous amount of rods and rods are the things

that we see in like fine detail, black and white typically, right? Yeah. Cones are color perceiving cells and each cell is specialized to either attune to wavelengths at red, green, or blue. Yeah, you have way more rods than cones, about 120 million rods in each eye and only about 6 million cones in each eye. And those cones are concentrated mostly in the front of your retina. Yeah, in the middle. Right, which is why you don't see color peripherally quite as well. That's right. So these cells are attuned to different wavelengths, right? The long wavelengths are red, medium is green and short is blue. I thought you said medium was yellow. No, that's in the middle. Oh, okay. Right. So medium is not in the middle? Well, as far as our RGB goes. Okay, got you.

Okay. Yeah. And so with these cells, Chuck, if you're looking at your blue horse, what was his name? Calvin? The blue horse? Yeah. So if you're looking at Calvin the blue horse, you're getting a lot of information from short wavelength light. Yes. Not so much at the long or medium wavelengths, right? Right. And so there's probably a little bit. It's not a true blue horse, right? Which would mean that it was a totally saturated blue, which is only that blue wavelength, true blue wavelength coming to your eyes. There's probably a little bit of green, a little bit of red. Right. And so all the cones in your eyes are getting all of this information at once. And they're reporting to your brain via electrical impulses about the quality of the wavelengths of

light that they're getting. That's right. And so your brain takes it and basically becomes a color mixer and creates the color blue that you're seeing Calvin as. Yeah. That's how we detect color. And from the R and the G and the B, you can put together supposedly the commission on illumination, a European commission on illumination back in 1931, determine that humans can see something like 2.38 million colors. Oh, it's up to a hundred million now. Is it because I've seen all over the place in this, the 1931 CIA findings are the ones that people say this has the best science behind it. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. 100 million. No, I'm sorry. 10 million. Okay. Okay. The other thing about the CIA is that people say, well, this was only under certain types of illumination.

I think three different types of illumination. Right. So it is entirely possible if you change the intensity or whatever, you're going to have brand new colors. So 10 million is reasonable. Okay. That's a lot of colors that we can see all from the red, the green and the blue cones coming together and your brain adjusting them and seeing, oh, well, that's burnt sienna. I know you're going to say that. Did you? Yeah, that's sort of the go-to joke color, right? It is. It's a pretty jokey color. It's a good one. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. 10 million colors, or let's say it's 2 million. If you're going by the 1931 model. Yeah. You know. The CIA naming convention. Should we talk about some of the characteristics of color? Yeah, but let's take

a break first. It's getting heavy. All right. Okay. I'm Mangesh Atikular and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show

about astrology, my whole world can crash down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, it's Chikis from Chikis and Chill podcast. And I want to tell you about a really exciting episode. We're going to be talking to Nancy Rodriguez from Netflix's Love is Blind Season 3. Looking back at your experience, were there any red flags that you think you missed? What I saw as a weakness of his, I wanted to embrace. The way I thought of it was whatever love I have from you is extra for me.

Like, I already love myself enough. Do I need you to validate me as a partner? Yes. Is it required for me to feel good about myself? No. Listen to Chikis and Chill on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. So if you, actually you can do this on your modern television as well, but it seemed like most TVs now kind of come fairly set up. But in the old days, when you had those little wheels to try and get that color right, it was, you know, you might have noticed things that said hue and intensity or value or tone and all that stuff. Those are all color characteristics. And hue specifically is, I mean, that's basically what the color is. It's not the

lightness or the darkness. It's, you know, it's the greenness or the redness or the blueness. Right. That's the hue. Yeah. It's what you can interchange that word with color. Yeah. Exactly. I like how they refer to it as the identity of a color. Yeah. It sounds kind of personal. The intensity is how pure it is. So like we said, most colors are mixes, you know, they bleed one way or the other on the wavelength. But in its purest form, a single wavelength, which is really rare, that would be the purity or the intensity of the color. Right. You're not going to see that very often though. No. And I was wondering, like that's pretty cool. There's some physics lab somewhere that can produce

pure saturated green, like unadulterated green or unadulterated blue. There is, or you're just saying I'm sure there's gotta be. Oh yeah. There has to be. Yeah, there probably is. That has got to be really something to see, to know you're looking at green, like nothing but green. I would like to see that sometime. Yeah. And I have, I'm not colorblind, but I have a more difficult time picking out other hues in a color. Whereas Emily's really good, like when picking out paint colors, like that gray has this and this and this in it. And I'm like, really? Like I see gray. Well, supposedly a lot of people have a color deficiency.

I might have a slight color deficiency. And a lot of people don't realize it. Well, yeah. A lot of people don't realize that they think that this color just looks like this and thinks everybody sees it that way. And that's not the case. And then it comes from a conversation where they're like, well, wait a minute, what do you mean you see a distinction between those? Well, but yeah, but in my case, it's hues. It's not like I see a completely different color or black. Or everything just looks gray. Yeah. I did a brain stuff on color blindness. It's pretty interesting. Yeah, I went to research that one time for a show and it was just like bent my mind so much.

I quietly filed it away. So I'm sure you'll pick it next week. Color blindness? Yeah. Value is the lightness or darkness of a color. And that's basically has to do with light, the energy of the light that makes it up. Yeah. And the value is, so hues is really just kind of a finite, very finite number of colors of hues, right? Yeah. And you think of like primary colors, which we'll talk about soon. But when you adjust something, when you adjust the value of it, that just creates a whole new range of colors. So if you add a little black to a color, what you're doing is shading it. Yeah. If you add white, you are creating a tint. Yeah. And then if you add black and white,

a gray, you're toning it. Yeah. Right? And I think people interchange those words without understanding what they mean. Yeah, but they are definite distinct things. And we should probably say there's a lot of really neat sites on the internet. Pantone is a really good one. Yeah. Where you can go look at color wheels and things like that and see the distinction between these things and be like, oh, you mean pastels. That's another word for a tone. Yeah. And it's a lot of people get really get into it because it's the basis of printing and art and photography and like every, every sort of art form, well, not every art form, but many art forms boil down to color. So if you go to art school,

you're going to study color pretty deeply. Yeah. You know. Yeah. And one of the things you're going to study is color theory and color theory is based on the idea that certain colors contrast one another, certain colors complement one another, certain colors should never be used together. And not that it's just, you know, your instructor Serge saying, no, these colors don't go together. It's not just Serge's opinion. Right. These are objective facts as far as color theory goes. Sure. And it's all based on these, the idea that all colors fall into one of two categories. You have additive colors and subtractive colors. Yeah. And there's a couple of, I mean, there's two distinct applications for both of these. If you're talking about

a computer screen or a television, that's, that's using light. So it's additive. If you're talking about paint or photography, that's subtractive. Right. So you can think of it this way with additive colors. You're starting with black and you're adding light to it. And ultimately, when you add all these additive colors together, you're going to have white. With subtractive colors, you start with white. And when you add all these colors together, you're ultimately going to have black and they subtract by absorbing one another's colors. Yeah. That's another color. Mine bender too, because with subtractive color, you're still adding colors, but it's not additive. Right. But there's sort of have to wrap your head around that. Yeah. But there's,

there's subtracting wavelengths by combining colors and absorbing them. Right. Yeah. It takes a hue out. So a really good example of subtractive colors is if you take cyan, cyan absorbs orange red, right? Right. So if you take cyan and you mix it with yellow, you produce green. And the reason that cyan and yellow produce green is because the cyan absorbs the red light and the yellow light, the yellow absorbs blue violet. And so the only color that's not subtracted or absorbed is green. That's right. So green is produced from these other pigments absorbing all the other wavelengths. Yeah. And with it, additive coloring, additive pigments, it's, it's quite the opposite. You have light combining to form new colors rather than absorbing, you're adding to it.

Yeah. And like the apple is an example, like we said earlier, of a subtractive color system. And again, like a TV screen would be additive. Yeah. I think we, I think we got that. Yeah. I mean, it is mine been a little bit. Some of this stuff, you know, I have to read like 10 times and then it sinks in. But the, the, the reason that all colors can be turned into either additive primaries or subtractive primaries is that these are the six colors of these. They're the six spectral colors. They're the rainbow colors, right? So additive primaries are what, red, green and blue. They're correct. RGB. Yeah. And then the subtractive colors are cyan, yellow and magenta. Yeah. I was going to say magenta. They're almost like bizarro colors.

They're the bizarro world primary colors. When you think of primary colors, you think of like the, what red, yellow and blue is what most people think of. Yeah. Red, yellow and blue were the traditional primaries and they still are. But when it comes to like painting and printing, they've been replaced with cyan, magenta, yellow and black. Right. CMYK. Yeah. When you go to your clubhouse printer. Yeah. That's what you're going to be seeing. CMYK or you can select RGB as well. Red, red, green and blue. So Crosby stills Nash and young, right? Or Crosby stills Nash. Yeah. Okay. That's the difference. That's a good rule of thumb, man. All right. So we mentioned primary colors just a second ago and then we have our secondary colors, green, orange and purple hues

which you get from mixing the primary colors. Right. And then you have something called tertiary colors which is just furthering the color hues by mixing primary colors with secondary colors. Right. So the six tertiary colors and the two sets of primary colors or the six secondary colors, I think and the two sets of primary colors form the color wheel. There's 12 colors in the color wheel. Yeah. And tertiary colors are the ones that you'll hear like blue, green or red violet. Yeah. It's like literally named the two colors. And color naming is another rabbit hole that you can go down. There's a site. Man, I wish I'd written it down. But it's, if you type in like who names colors or color naming or something like that in Google, like one of the

one of the first page entries is the site that you go through and it shows you different colors and you write what you would name that color. Oh, interesting. Butter yellow or something like that. Right. And the whole, well, that was as far as I got. I'm like, well, I would call this butter yellow. And you got hungry. Had other things to do. But you can go through and just, I think it's like 10 or 20 different shades that they show you, colors that they show you. And the whole purpose of all this is to find some sort of commonality to create universal naming convention for colors. Yeah. Makes sense. Because there is a lot of distinction among languages for naming colors. But at least one study that I found decided that all colors universally for societies that do

recognize individual colors rather than these are just warm colors and these are cool colors, which is universal. The more primary the color, the shorter and easier to remember the name of it is, like across cultures. So not all cultures will call it blue. Right. But what a culture is going to have like another like short, monosyllabic name for that color. Right. For the same thing that we would call blue. Oh, that's pretty interesting. Yeah. Just because it's easier to understand. It's just, it's basic. Like colors appear to be basic universally. All right. I think we should take another break and maybe come back and talk a little bit about how colors can compliment each other and live in harmony and what that all means

to us. Okay. I'm Mangesh Atikular. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation

doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, it's Chikis from Chikis and Chill Podcast. And I want to tell you about a really exciting episode. We're going to be talking to Nancy Rodriguez from Netflix's Love is Blind Season 3. Looking back at your experience, were there any red flags that you think you missed? What I saw as a weakness of his, I wanted to embrace. The way I thought of it was whatever love I have from you is extra for me. Like, I already love myself enough. Do I need you to

validate me as a partner? Yes. Is it required for me to feel good about myself? No. Listen to Chikis and Chill on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. We're back. We sure are, man. So we talked about the different primary colors, secondary, and tertiary. And there's also something called complementary colors, which are basically contrasting colors that make a neutral color when put together. And they are really far apart in hue, as far apart as they can be. And if you look at the color wheel, they're on the complete opposite side from one another. And when you place them next to each other, then their hue is like, I guess it's just more robust looking because they complement one

another. Right. Yeah. Complimentary doesn't necessarily mean like, oh, they look great together under all circumstances. Right. So some complementary colors like red and green, if you place them next to each other in the same intensity and the same size, it's another one. Yeah. You are going to have what's called an eyesore. I have a shirt like that. It's just too much equal amounts of bright red and bright green. Try to think of that shirt. It's just a Christmas shirt. Oh, is it retired? Yeah. Well, it's for the holidays. Yeah. It's a holiday shirt. Okay. But the whole point of having colors and using colors together isn't just like, well, these two are opposite the color wheel. So I'm going to use them in

equal amounts and equal intensity and everything will be great. Yeah. You have to achieve what's called color harmony. And in doing that, you want to choose different shades or different tones or different tints and also different amounts at once. So like you're going to use a bunch of red and a little bit of green as an accent. That would be much more harmonious than equal amounts of intense red and green next to each other. Yeah. And again, this is when we say it's not a matter of taste that's like picking something out as a matter of taste. But again, these are like scientific rules. Right. You can't just throw two colors together and say that looks great. Yeah. Or that they're harmonious. Yeah. I mean, I guess you could, but you'd be wrong.

You would. Surge would be like, you're wrong. This is objective stuff. And then with complementary colors, getting back to that, there's this really cool thing that they bring up called retinal fatigue. So you can do a little experiment at home that's kind of blows your mind, but it really illustrates how color works pretty well. If you look at a bright red spot for about a minute, your retinas are going to soak in all that red, all those cones are. And then when you go immediately and look at a white surface, you're going to see green briefly. Right. Not forever. Right. And the reason why is because your red cells have just been basically overstimulated and they're going to respond weekly to the information that they're getting

from that white, right? Yeah. And your blue and green cells are going to be functioning just fine. So they're going to easily overwhelm your red cells. And so what you'll see is this ghost image of like a cyan square. Yeah, which is why. And the reason why is because red is the complement of green. It'll always be that opposite. Right. It doesn't just like randomly pick out a color. I know. And if you start adding all this stuff together, that there are objectively complementary colors that you see when you see too much of the opposite one, doesn't it all seem to fit it so cleanly together that you're almost like, what is going on here? Like, what is color? Why do we see color? Yeah. It's a really good question. And evolutionary biologists have not

been able to explain it fully. Yeah. I guess I really never thought about that because there's well, I mean, there's probably some evolutionary benefit, right? Sure. Like green things are generally good to eat. Yeah. But green is also the kind of a universal color for disgust or sickness or illness. Oh, like you're green because you're green around the gills or something like that. And that's true. Green is often like the color of rot. Grass. But it's true. I mean, it's both. So how did we evolve to understand the nuanced? And I mean, clearly, if we didn't evolve to see in color so that we could do this, we have as a byproduct of it, but we can very easily tick off whether something is healthy for us, dangerous. We get a lot of information about an object in

our environment's quality and desirability based on its color. It's almost like a shorthand that our brains pick up. Yeah. And part of that is because we're conditioned after years of using green for go and green for safe passage and red or orange for hazard signs and stop signs. So part of that's conditioning. But as far as going back many, many years before we made stop signs, I have no idea. Yeah. It really makes you wonder. And even the idea that pink is for girls and blue is for boys, that's a fairly recent development prior to, I think, the early 20th century, it was the opposite. Did we ever do that as a show or did it? No, it was too short. I think we did like a video or something, didn't we? Maybe. I seem to remember that.

But it was the opposite until like the 1900s. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. Totally. That's why you rock your pink shirts. Well, yeah. Right? That's exactly why. That in fashion. So getting back to harmonious colors, if they are side by end, this is if you're like picking out colors in your house or whatever, if you're not very good at it, there are a few hard and fast rules. Colors that are, and get your little color wheel out is really handy. If they're side by side, they're going to harmonize well. And like we mentioned, colors directly across from one another complementary ones also go well in the right proportions. Because like you said, the size of it makes a big difference. Right? They point out in the article, I don't

know if you've ever seen someone who's like painted their room red like in college. You know, some stupid roommate would do that. It's an assault on your senses because you're not used to seeing that much red. Right. But maybe an accent wall and a shade of red matched with a complementary color. You wouldn't want to read in green room though. I guess green is complimented or red. No, but you could conceivably say use the complementary color for like the trim or something like that. Yeah, exactly. And then tints and shades and tones of the same color are always okay together. It's never going to clash, but you just got to mess around with like how much of one compared to the other and what pleases your eye. Right? Yes. So there is a clash though. No. And so

again, Serge is saying like no, there's objective truth as to complementary colors and harmonious colors. But there is also personal preference. Oh, sure. And this is kind of like the thorn in the side of the whole idea of color psychology that people use colors to manipulate other people into like buying a product or whatever. Study after study keeps finding that color preference and color symbolism is extremely personal. It's based on past experience on your upbringing, on your culture. Like for example, here in the West, we wear black for mourning. Yeah. Well in the East, white is the color for mourning. Right. So there's a lot of culturally bound ideas about color too, which keeps it from being like universally symbolic or whatever. But that being said,

there are some that just from being exposed to it time and time again, like a red stoplight that you come to identify symbolically with other stuff. Yeah. And colors will also affect everyone differently mood wise, but there are some generalities there too. Like blue is generally a soothing color that will calm you down. Too much though could actually have the opposite effect, like too much blue on some people. Or it can really depress you. What, blue can? Yeah. I wonder if that's why they say you're blue. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, think about it. We describe our world like that green with envy. Blue means you're down in the dumps. Red means you're angry. Yeah. Red faced. Yeah. Or redneck. No, wait, that's different.

It's a little different. Warm colors, reds and yellows can also lift the spirits if you're less excitable. And they say that most people want to just strike a balance though between the cool and the warm. Right. And that's when it comes to like personal preference. Yeah. But the idea behind this is that a lot of people don't realize this is going on, that they're being affected by color even though they are, that it's on a very unconscious level. Yeah. And it also depends a lot on light, like how much light a room has coming into it because you're going to, because sunlight is different than artificial light, your shirt's going to look a different color outside in the sun as it might. And I remember when we did the TV show, there was a lot of, with colors and stuff,

you know, things would look different outside than they would under studio lights. Right. What's neat though is we humans have developed this trick called color constancy, where if you look at something, even if it's in the shadow or in the sunlight, it should conceivably look like different colored things because of the illumination. Yeah. But to us, we're still like, no, that's still green just because there's, you know, shadow blocking it now. I still see it as green. Yeah. It doesn't make any sense. And it's kind of perplexed. I guess biologists for a while trying to figure out what this is or neurologists. And they figured out that yes, it is in the brain. And there was this one guy who had some sort of brain damage, I think from an electric shock. And he also went, for all

intents and purposes, blind. Yeah. But he could still see color. What? But he didn't have color constancy. So they figured out that this guy was detecting wavelengths of light color. Even though he couldn't see anything, he could see color still. But color constancy wasn't there. So they figured out, well, that means that it's a trick of the brain. Very neat. That's very cool. They also bring up in the, in the House of Works article, something I think is pretty interesting how certain, because of conditioning, certain colors can just appear to be wrong. Like if you were to pull up and see a green stop sign, it would freak you out. Yeah. Or the example they used in here is if you cracked an egg and there was a green egg yolk, that would be really freaky, too,

because you're just so used to that yellow, right? You know, you'd think, well, this is disease or something. Yeah. Or Dr. Seuss. Right. You know. What else you got? Did you look at that thing on pigment? I did. There's some wacky ways people have made pigments. Yeah. I mean, pigment, as far as making paint and things, now they're synthetic, you know, like they're synthesized in laboratories, which makes sense. But throughout all of history, up until they started doing that, they were actual real things in the ground and on the earth that they would grind up into powder. In the case of blue, there was a semi-precious stone called, or there still is, called lapis lazuli that was found all over the place in Afghanistan. And that's how they made blue.

Azure or azurite is a blue mineral of copper. So all of them, most of them have a few different ways they can make it. Red, I think we've talked about cinnabar before, the mineral. Yeah. Is where you get vermilion red and carmine. Carmine is bright red and that comes from aluminum salt of carminic acid. So it's just crazy that they found all these things in the world to make. And I know blue is the toughest one because you don't see blue very much in nature. I think blue is the one you will see least in the primary colors as far as nature goes. Right. Like some insects, but like there's no blue food. Yeah, that's true. Blue horses, no?

What about mine? My favorite was India yellow, where they would feed cows nothing but mango leaves and then collect their urine and then boil it down, then filter out the concentrated muck and then make balls out of it. And there was the basis of your pigment. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. Cool stuff. So those are just a few. If you really get into pigments and you can go crazy trying to figure out where they all came from. Definitely. And again, this is really just the surface of color. There's so much to it. And I strongly advise you to go out and learn more about it. Color. It's everywhere. Oh, how about the one last factoid? Why is the sky blue? Oh, it's a good one. This guy's not really blue. No, it shouldn't really have any color. Yeah.

But the angle of the sun coming down on the upper atmosphere encounters things like water vapor and other tiny particles. And they tend to scatter blue wavelength light more than the other colors, right? That's it. So that's just bouncing around at all points, which is why the sky is blue. It's a like noontime. But while the sky is blue at noontime over here, it's a sunrise or sunset to the east or the west. Yeah. And since all that blue light is getting scattered over you, where it's noontime, in the east or the west, those reds and yellows and pinks are making it all the way there. Yeah. And the blue is not, which is why sunrise and sunset, it tends to appear reddish, whereas like midday appears blue. Yeah, which is it makes total sense. And when your kids

ask you, why is the sky blue? You can tell them. You can tell them like the real reason. You can be like color does not actually exist. Yeah. It's all a lie. Good luck with that. Go to sleep. If you want to know more about color, just type that word in your favorite search engine or how stuff works that common. It will take you on a wild ride. And since I said wild ride, it's time for listener mail. Uh, I'm going to call this something I've never heard of before, precocious puberty. You ever heard of that? Yes, we talked about it. Did we? Early puberty. Okay. Did we talk about that? Yeah, we said, I guess this is in girls. So maybe that's why it got you surprised me. I'm a long time listener and thanks for helping me in my commute every day. Really enjoyed and giggled

my way through the episode of male puberty. Um, thanks so much for mentioning precocious puberty. Well, there you have it. I was diagnosed at age two after my mom came to wake me before school one day and I had a full beard now before preschool. This is a lady. Uh, and she had started her period at two years old. Wow. And as you can imagine, my mom was terrified. It took a long time to get a correct diagnosis since it is pretty rare. My treatment started out as daily shots that my mom gave me at home. Um, that then went to weekly monthly and annually as the years progressed. I also had intermittent stays in the hospital for testing. Oh, poor kid. I know. Treatment was stopped when I reached 12 years old, essentially pressing play on my puberty that had been on

pause for almost 10 years. That's, that's, see, that's cool treatment. Yeah. I mean, it's amazing that they figured out how to stall puberty. Yeah, they're like, stay, stay. Okay, go. I have only hazy memories of this, of course, as I was a child, but I do remember that missing shots caused quite a bit of pain since my body was growing out of control, essentially. I've never been able to find out what the longterm effects might be, but I've had a pretty decent health into my adult life and I'm now 31 years old. Awesome. So thanks a lot. And that is from Lauren in California. Well, thanks a lot. Lauren, appreciate that. We love hearing from people with real life experiences of stuff we just talk about. That's right. You know, if you want to let us know about your real

life experience, we want to hear it. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast at howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boybander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Attention, Bachelor Nation. He's back. The host of some

of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. During two decades in reality TV, Chris saw it all. And now he's telling all. It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. We have a lot to talk about. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.