why is the sky blue?
Posted by orangewink on March 22, 2007
from a bk The Beginner’s Guide to Colour Psychology (Angela Wright) a bit more abt colours – basic terms
- hue – the attribute of colour which enables an observer to classify it as red, blue etc (collins dict)
- tint – a hue with white added
- shade – a hue with black added
- tone – a hue with grey added
- value – the lightness or darkness of a colour – light colours are ‘high in value and dark colours ‘low in value’
- chroma – the presence of colour
- chromatic intensity/saturation – percentage of colour present
- monochromatic – containing shades, tones and tints of only one colour
- achromatic – containing no colour – i.e. black, white or pure grey
- complementary colours – colours opposite each other on the colour wheel
the complementary colours are:
- red and green (blue + yellow)
- blue and orange (red + yellow)
- yellow and violet (blue + red)
other interesting facts:
there are rod receptors in our eye that enables us to see colour. apparently goethe did experiments that proved that when we look into darkness, the first colour to appear will be blue, and when we look towards sunlight, the first colour to appear is yellow. our peripheral vision/night vision is most sensitive to blue, looking towards light, the first colour we see is yellow. hence our perceptions of sunlight as yellow and the sky as blue. therefore, the primary colours are really white, black, yellow and blue.
so we can answer the question, ‘why is the sky blue?’… it’s not blue, our rod receptors register it as blue… duh.
