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emily's picture

 First off, I just want to

 First off, I just want to say that I love color, it fascinates me. Color vision is something beautiful we often take for granted. I understand how we all have different perceptions of each and every color (from crayon colors cerulean to macaroni-and-cheese), but it is hard for me to believe that people's color concepts vary SO MUCH. For example, I find it hard to believe that someone (who has no form of color blindness)'s "orange" could be my "green" because both of us describe "orange" to be "warm". However, it fascinates me to imagine what someone who is color blind sees as a color they are not capable of seeing. For instance, if they are missing their high range wavelength cones, do they notice a difference when someone else calls something red, and another calls something green? In Little Miss Sunshine, the brother wants to be in the Air Force, which you can't join if you are colorblind. He does not realize he is colorblind until some point on their road trip, which is several years into his life. What did he see?

Another thing that really fascinates me is electronic color. How can you program a computer, a tv, to produce a specific wavelength of light? One often thinks of color (the reflection/absorption of wavelengths) as an intrinsic property of an object...how are those lights created and how can they change?

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