Why are indigo and violet in the rainbow and not just purple?
I always learned “ROYGBIV” as the colors of the rainbow. Red, orange, yellow, blue, indigo, violet.
What’s up with the last two? Isn’t indigo basically just dark blue? Why is it violet and not purple? Can’t it just be “ROYGBP”?
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Well yes, but the differentiation of colors varies by, believe it or not, culture! For example, the Japanese word for blue, 青 (ao) was used both (depending on context) for what we would call blue and green, and it wasn’t until modern times that a new word, 緑 (midori) started being used to explicitly define what we might call green. Even now, their ‘green’ traffic lights would be described as blue in other cultures. My apologies for the euro-centric over-simplification, but here’s a great article to elaborate further: https://cotoacademy.com/japanese-color-blue-green-aoi-midori-青い-みどり/
Interesting point.
And I am a little bit with the Japanese in this regard. At least my GF always complains that I am unable to correctly distinguish between green and blue ;-)
There's a difference between linguistic simplicity and color blindness.
Well in my case it's more about where to draw the line between blue and green.
I can differentiate the colours but just still call things blue that my GF (and most of the rest of the world, apart from Japanese and the german dialect I grew up with as it seems) already calls green.
This is a running joke in my house. My daughters like to wear a lot of blue/green shirts. Apparently I always guess it wrong.
Finally, I am not the only one! Feels good.
Purple, or violet, is a bit shorter than 400 nanometers regarding its wavelength.
https://pixfeeds.com/images/7/308404/1200-308404-483872671.jpg