Submitted by romxza t3_102kyc4 in askscience
dmmaus t1_j359y61 wrote
Reply to comment by romxza in How close does one need to bring two coloured lights together to perceive a compound colour effect? by romxza
It's important to understand that colour sensation is entirely psychophysical. The colours we sense are a product of the construction of our eyes and nervous systems - they don't really exist outside the context of a human observer (or an observer with the same visual architecture).
A spectrometer can easily tell the difference between (light of wavelength 580nm) and (mix of light with wavelengths 480nm and 650nm). There is a physical difference. But human vision cannot tell the difference - our brains sense both these as "yellow". Which one is really yellow? Neither. "Yellow" has no physical reality outside a human brain - it's our label for a sensation that we have.
Prestigious_Carpet29 t1_j68qfaf wrote
Yes.
See metamerism
This is also why paint-matching can be a huge problem. You can get two paints that look the same colour under one lightsource (eg. daylight) but are visibly different under a different source (e.g. fluorescent, or sodium streetlights)
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