Quiz Time!

This week for a treat we found a fun quiz from X-rite  that tests hue discrimination. It determines which sections of the spectrum you see well and where you have less acuity. Just like golf we are aiming for the lowest score possible. 

When color insensitivity gets more severe it turns in to color blindness. But in a species with such amazing evolved traits why would we still be left with 5% (mostly male) of the population with detrimental vision? Wikipedia explains:

"Any recessive genetic characteristic that persists at a level as high as 5% is generally regarded as possibly having some evolutionary advantage over the long term, such as better discrimination of color camouflaged objects especially in low-light conditions. At one time the U.S. Army found that color blind people could spot "camouflage" colors that fooled those with normal color vision. Humans have a higher percentage of color blindness than macaque monkeys according to recent research."

So how did we do on the test? Pretty well actually. We came out with a score of 11 and a mild blue-violet insensitivity. 

But we what to know how our color smart readers do!

- Emily Eifler, Writer, Colour Studio

- Jill Pilaroscia, Principal, Colour Studio

Lapis Lazuli

We at Colour Studio  want to help educate our Clients about the importance of color in their projects. Color is a sometimes over looked and undervalued after thought that can bring distinction to an otherwise bland space. But despite our modern preoccupation with steel, glass and white paint,  materials rich in color have been prized for ages all over the world. Lapis Lazuli, a semi precious stone, is a great example.   When light hits the surface of the stone it actually interacts with its chemical composition at the atomic level. It rearranges its electrons  to higher energy levels by absorbing a slim portion of the lights wavelengths. All of the light not used to energize those electrons is reflected and can be seen by the eye as a rich powerful blue.

A beautiful piece of raw Lapis via Laynedesigns

Mining and trading of the stone dates back to predynastic Egypt and 3rd millennium B.C. Afghanistan. Victoria Finlay in her book Color describes the birth place of lapis.

"With the exception of a few Russian icons which may have been painted with blue from Sibera, all the real ultramarine in both Western and Eastern art came from [Afghanistan] - from one set of mines in a valley in north-east Afganistan, collectively called Sar-e-sang, the Place of the Stone. It was where the Buddha's topknots came from [and] it was where the monk painters of illuminated manuscripts found their skies."

A Mesopotamian lapis lazuli pendant circa 2900 BC via Wikipedia

For a stone with poor utilitarian qualities it traveled far and wide, Egypt, Rome, Iran and China to name a few. While is can not be used for bright blue spear heads, Lapis Lazuli but can be used for jewelry and other aesthetic carvings as well as crushed in to pigments and paints, even Cleopatra's eye shadow !  Humans yearn for ornamentation, and not just for our bodies in the form of jewelry, fashion and tattoos. We ornament our spaces to better reflect and influence our lives, and color is one of our favorite ornaments. But why would we decorate ourselves and our spaces with blue exactly? What's the draw? Again from Victoria Finlay's book Color:

"It is curious the in English the word "blue" should represent depressing as well as transcendent things; that it should be the most holy hue and the color of pornography. Perhaps this is because blue recedes into the distance - artists use it to create space in their paintings...- so it represents a place that is outside normal life, beyond not only the sea but the horizon itself. Fantasy, depression and God are all, like blue, in the more mysterious reaches of our conscienceless."

 Elisabeth Taylor playing Cleopatra via Makeup Mac

 

- Emily Eifler, Writer, Colour Studio

- Jill Pilaroscia, Principal, Colour Studio

The Amazing Mantis Shrimp

This weeks colorful adventure is taking us under water to the tropical home of the Mantis shrimp, or Hoplocarida Stomatopod.  These colorful beauties are most famous for their amazing claws, which they use to bludgeon their prey.  Their claws have been clocked from a standing start  at speeds  comparable  to the  of firing a .22 caliber bullet.  Wikipedia mentions their incredible destructive power: "Although it happens rarely, some larger species of mantis shrimp are capable of breaking through aquarium glass with a single strike from this weapon."

These creatures have another amazing quality -  their highly evolved eyes. But before we reveal just how amazing lets explain a bit about color vision. In humans,  color is seen using three color specialized cells called photoreceptors. Humans have red, green and blue receptor cells which can combine to  give us access to all the colors we see everyday, the  seven color rainbow. Your dog has only blue yellow vision so its rainbow is only yellow, green and blue.  Butterflies for example have 5 different photoreceptor cells so they can see more colors in the rainbow; colors located in the  ultra violet spectrum as well  as additional colors that fall between blue and green. 

The beautiful texture of the Mantis Shrimp eye via Meintank

And then we get to the mantis shrimp who weight in with no less than 16 unique photoreceptor cells. These amazing eyes, the most sensitive know to science, allow them to see 5 or 6 different kinds of ultraviolet, a far more nuanced version of our rainbow, as well as far in to the infrared. As Mark Changizi states on a RadioLab podcast on the subject: "They have the most complicated visual system of any animals by a factor of two or more." Can you imagine seeing such a richly diverse array of colors?


 If you want to hear all about these amazing shrimp as well as the history of color science starting with Newton through the brains construction of color Radiolab has a great podcast all about it.

- Emily Eifler, Writer, Colour Studio

- Jill Pilaroscia, Principal, Colour Studio

Happy 4th!

Fireworks celebrating the Chinese New Dragon Lunar Year for 2012 via *dans

Last night we were out in the San Francisco cold and fog watching the sky explode with color! For our Happy 4th of July post we want to talk about fireworks. But around here we need a bit of science with our color so lets talk about the chemistry of of these beautiful explosive displays. 

Firework fan at Bostalsee via 55Laney69

 Fireworks require two basic components: an oxidizer and a fuel to create an explosion   Black powder, the first firework discovered in China in the 10th Century, is a combination of potassium nitrate, charcoal and sulfur. "You only need the first two ingredients, an oxidizing agent and a fuel, to start the explosion. The oxidizing agent, often a perchlorate or nitrate salt, releases oxygen gas that feeds the fire in a firework. The fuel reacts with the oxidizing agent to create the gas. The sulfur in black powder intensifies and continues the reaction between the other two ingredients."In addition to this basic recipe Pyrotechnicians often add metal salts which are burned in the reaction emitting specific wavelengths of light.

Fireworks Displays at Victoria Harbour, Hong Kong, during Chinese New Year 2011 via Amar_Rai

Melissae Fellet from KQED has a great explanation of the magic of these chemical reactions at the atomic level:

"Heating atoms of sodium, barium or strontium pumps energy into the electrons whizzing around each nucleus. Those energized electrons shoot up to higher locations in the atom. As they fall back down to their usual positions, the electrons lose their extra energy as visible light.

The amount of energy released during this process – which depends on the element – is related to the color of the light that we see. Higher energy, like that released by copper atoms, corresponds to a shorter wavelength of light towards the blue end of the spectrum. Red light from strontium atoms has a longer wavelength and lower energy."

 

And for a little dash of color: The video features John A. Conkling, Ph.D.,  the author of The Chemistry of Pyrotechnics, Basic Principles and Theory, showing us how different combinations of chemicals create different colors when ignited. Its explosive!

- Emily Eifler, Writer, Colour Studio
- Jill Pilaroscia, Principal, Colour Studio