How many colors can we see?

Moment of Um

American Public Media

Kids & Family, Education For Kids

4.4 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 31 October 2023

⏱️ 5 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

It’s a colorful world out there! When light from the sun hits surfaces on Earth, those surfaces reflect different wavelengths of light. Our eyes collect those waves and send them to our brains, which interpret the waves as colors! It’s an incredible process, and it happens in…well, the blink of an eye. But how many different colors can our eyes and brains identify? We asked University of Leeds color science professor Stephen Westland to help us find the answer.

Got a HUE-mungous question? Send it to us at BrainsOn.org/contact, and we’ll identif-EYE the answer.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	From the brains behind Brains on, this is the moment of um.
0:04.4	Moment of um.
0:09.6	Moment of um comes to you from APM studios.
0:13.0	I'm Blink, and I'm a talking eyeball.
0:16.0	As an eyeball, it's my job to soak in all the light from the world around you and turn it into information
0:25.8	that I send down to your brain for processing.
0:29.2	Now, Brain and I are pals.
0:31.6	Love their work. Really admire their organizational skills. But sometimes
0:36.9	it's hard for an artiste like me to communicate with such a... How shall I say this, stickler for information? And brain does tend to
0:48.1	overthink everything. Like the other day I was trying to send a gorgeous shade of red that I saw in some garden flowers.
0:57.0	Next thing I know, brain is spiraling off into a whole galaxy of questions.
1:02.0	What kind of flowers are those? What kind of red are they? Is it a
1:06.6	yellowy red? Or more like a purpley red? Do other eyeballs see that flower is red?
1:12.4	How many colors are there? Do other eyeballs see that flower is red?
1:12.8	How many colors are there?
1:15.2	It was a lot.
1:17.6	But it did remind me of a great question
1:22.1	that my friend Avi sent in.
1:25.1	Hi, my name is Avi and I'm from San
1:28.7	Samoa, California.
1:31.3	My question is, how many colors can I see?
1:35.0	Scientists estimate that the number of colors that most of us can discriminate between is about 5 million.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from American Public Media, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of American Public Media and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.