QOTU: How Do You Explain Color?

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[andyrumschlag]

Color is relatively easy to describe; it's a certain part of the electromagnetic spectrum that bounces off of an object and is captured by the eye. The difficulty comes in trying to describe what the sensation of seeing that color is like. It's just like how we can't see ultraviolet waves or infrared waves. Everything that we see is constantly reflecting those waves, just like they reflect color, our eyes just aren't equipped to pick them up.

[MariahTheTuber]

I would shine a reaaalllyy bright light in someones eyes, get them to close their eyes, then they would see the colors....do you get it? You know when you see colours when your eyes are closed? Someone tell me they get it?? :P

[kimmiko8]

I always wonder, 'What if there is a completely new colour made? What would it look like?!'

[othail]

you can't explain color without a point of reference. it would equally as hard to explain sounds to people that can't hear.

[craigmac1989]

I think it would be like adding another dimension to what people see, like if you had a scale of everything that people could see it would be like a vertical scale with white at one end, black at the other and all the shades of grey in the middle. With color it would be like at every point of grey there's a horizontal scale with all the different colors that are that bright

[kira902k]

Interesssinnng

[darkeyes247]

@Lauen324 Not as interesting as you'd think. I shy away from natural skin tone. And skin altogether mostly. Otherwise everybody looks like lobsters.

[sarahsoliloquy]

You would just have to put other colors in terms of existing colors. It's like what Terry Pratchett does, trying to describe that octarine color. So you would have to say, it's like black or white or grey, there are just more of them. It's like how ancient peoples considered "shiny" or "glittery" as a color. Because they saw colors more in those terms, in ancient Greece for instance, in terms of brightness more than shade. My Master's thesis is partly about ancient colors! =)

[sweetypie000]

If you were the "last person on the planet" there wouldn't be anyone else to explain colour to.

[senoritasophs13]

what has always got me is that when you look at an object and see a colour (lets say green), your green could look like my pink and vice versa. we learned the names for things... but what if we each see completely different colours but call them by the names we learned them. There is no way to tell. even colour tests would not work because my green could be pink to you, but we would both call it green because that is what we learned. Hm. My brain hurts.

[0manderijn0]

@MariahTheTuber I'm afraid that wouldn't work

you only see those colours then because you are able to see colour

if you can't see colour at all, you can't see those colours as well

[321anita]

I guess one way of describing color would be through emotions and sensations. Like a cool blue color might be described as invoking a sense of calm or serenity. Or else how the cloud feels, like a breeze that tingles your neck and makes shivers run down you spine. Something like that.