Is it possible to create new colors

It is currently believed that our concept of color is built from "opponent processes. Same for blue and yellow. This is why alternating lines of them clash so heavily. If you can imagine a reddish green or a bluish yellow, you can imagine an impossible color, which in theory you have never seen. There is some evidence to suggest that it is possible to observe one of these "impossible colors" by having one eye view one color and one eye view the other.

It's debatable whether this color actually existed, because it depends entirely on the fusion between the two eyes, and yet some people do insist it exists.

Under normal circumstances, there is no hue that one could describe as a mixture of opponent hues; that is, as a hue looking "redgreen" or "yellowblue". In , Hewitt D. Crane and Thomas P. Piantanida performed tests using an eye-tracker device that had a field of a vertical red stripe adjacent to a vertical green stripe, or several narrow alternating red and green stripes or in some cases, yellow and blue instead.

The device could track involuntary movements of one eye there was a patch over the other eye and adjust mirrors so the image would follow the eye and the boundaries of the stripes were always on the same places on the eye's retina; the field outside the stripes was blanked with occluders.

Under such conditions, the edges between the stripes seemed to disappear perhaps due to edge-detecting neurons becoming fatigued and the colors flowed into each other in the brain's visual cortex, overriding the opponency mechanisms and producing not the color expected from mixing paints or from mixing lights on a screen, but new colors entirely, which are not in the CIE color space, either in its real part or in its imaginary parts.

For red-and-green, some saw an even field of the new color; some saw a regular pattern of just-visible green dots and red dots; some saw islands of one color on a background of the other color. Some of the volunteers for the experiment reported that afterwards, they could still imagine the new colors for a period of time. Some observers indicated that although they were aware that what they were viewing was a color that is, the field was not achromatic , they were unable to name or describe the color.

One of these observers was an artist with a large color vocabulary. Other observers of the novel hues described the first stimulus as a reddish-green. Curious what such a color might feel like? Some people claim that if they cross their eyes such that the crosses in the picture below overlap, they see yellow-blue, an impossible color. Of course, to go much further would start to explore the question of whether color is a "real" thing or an "illusion.

I make such a statement, of course, to tie the answer back to philosophy, but you have to admit that the cognative science side of the answer is rather fascinating!

One thing to contemplate here is that we know that the standard-issue human visual system is definitely limited in critical ways. And we don't even have to speculate to see this: tetrachromacy is "the condition of possessing four independent channels for conveying color information".

Tetrachromats are able to differentiate colors that appear identical to those without the condition. But they may also be sensitive to wavelengths outside the typical perceptual 'bands'. However, I'm not sure we really know what it would be like for your visual system to "suddenly" start receiving this additional information. At any rate, tetrachromacy points to the fact that color is deep.

It seems to me to demonstrate that color space certainly isn't exhausted by the handful of cone and rod types that modern humans happen to have evolved. Note that there's nothing special about three or four channels -- rather than any other number of channels -- for conveying color data.

My suggestion is more along the lines that color is a richer quality than any finite set of input channels could convey. It is relative to being human to be able possess the functions of being able to imagine feelings, spaces, objects, and textures, we have never experienced. There is always the experiential historic senses of color to use as the basis for the unknown color, but if you described gold as a bright shiny yellow, it would still not be gold.

Whether or not an imagined color is accurate would depend on the language used to describe it. I will use short exercise I created in to describe how language creates realities we can only get to through imagination. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group.

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Asked 4 years, 6 months ago. Active 1 year, 4 months ago. Viewed 29k times. Improve this question. Conifold Abyr Valg Abyr Valg 1 1 gold badge 1 1 silver badge 7 7 bronze badges. There are possibly two different questions here. Do you mean to ask if we can 'imagine' a new color, meaning something like sitting down and closing our eyes and thinking really hard until a color we haven't seen before pops up?

Or do you mean to ask if there are colors outside of our range of vision or if there are colors within that range that nobody has ever seen before?

The title question seems to be the first but the body question second sentence seems to be the second. What about if you gained the ability to see a new color, then saw that new color somewhere, then lost the ability to see that color. Could you still imagine what it looked like? I have an inkling that considering synesthesia might help confuse things -- it seems plausible that when something "sounds green" it is a type of green not seen normally. Another case where I have direct experience is in music audiation -- there can be a disconnect between what you hear in your head and what you can actually create as sound.

IE 11 is not supported. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. Share this —. Follow today. More Brands. By Randee Dawn. Draw a circle on the white paper, using the sanding disk as a guide. Divide the circle on the white paper into two halves.

Color the two halves. Make one red and one blue. Cut out the colored circle. Glue the colored circle onto the piece of cardboard. Attach the cardboard with the colored circle onto the sanding disk. The method for attaching the circle will depend on the type of drill. It might be helpful to glue the colored circle to a piece of sandpaper that fits on the disk. See Figure 1. Multimedia Artist or Animator.

Log in to add favorite More Menu Read More. Physics Teacher. Variations Try to make other colors peach, lime, navy blue, pink, etc. Change the size of the pie segments, as needed. You can use black and white segments too. Record the data colors added, segments sizes, resulting color in your lab notebook. Ask an Expert The Ask an Expert Forum is intended to be a place where students can go to find answers to science questions that they have been unable to find using other resources.

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Optional: Caption for picture. You will need a cordless electric drill and a sanding disk for this science fair project.