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From: avram@interport.net (Avram Grumer)
Subject: Re: Dialects (Was Re: Shakespeare's Future)
Message-ID: <avram-ya02408000R1703971356500001@news.crossover.com>
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 1997 13:56:50 -0400
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In article <5gag3o$h1s@universe.digex.net>, nancyl@universe.digex.net
(Nancy Lebovitz) wrote:

>There's a fascinating book called _Blue and Yellow Don't Make Green_
>which concludes that you can't do decent color mixing with fewer
>than six initial colors. Firstly, if you had perfectly pure
>blue and yellow pigments (blue only reflects blue wavelengths,
>yellow only reflects yellow) and mixed them, you'd get a color
>which was almost black because nearly all of the light falling
>on it would get absorbed. 

That doesn't sound right to me.  If you had a batch of Pure Pigement B
(each particle of which reflects blue wavelengths only) and Pure Pigment Y
(each particle of which reflect yellow wavelengths only), and blended them,
you'd get a mixture of the two pigments.  Any given photon would have a 50%
chance of striking either a B molecule or a Y molecule.  (I'm ignoring
quantum mechanical weirdnesses.  I'm also ignoring transparency.)  The
author seems to be assuming that B and Y will combine chemically to produce
a new compound, Pure Pigment K, which doesn't reflect anything.  


>Fortunately, you can't get such pure
>pigments. Secondly, if your blue or yellow are "warm" (reddish),
>you'll get a muddy green--you need "cool" blue and yellow.

That's true.  And a good thing; you'll want that "muddy" green for painting
green objects in the distance.

--
Avram Grumer                            Home:   avram@interport.net
http://www.crossover.com/agrumer        Work: agrumer@crossover.com

Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. 
Teach him how to fish, and you drive up the price of 
bait and tackle, and disrupt the local ecosystem.

