Sir Isaac Newton's Favorite Color
bob cannetti
Doug Sweetser
> Does anyone know what Newton's favorite color was and why?
Funny question :-) I know he made a huge contribution to what color _is_.
There was debate in Newton's time about white light: did it have all the
colors in it, or did it get objects to express their true colors? Working
with the light from the Sun, he sent the light through a prism, isolated
one of the colors, and sent that through a second prism, which stayed the
same color. This showed that white light is composed of the rainbow of
pure colors. The experiment was technically quite a challenge because the
Sun moves in the sky, which requires the prisms to move also.
I have heard it said that the man published more than one million words, so
his favorite might be out there somewhere.
doug
Dirk Bruere at Neopax
news:f6848533.03082...@posting.google.com...
> Does anyone know what Newton's favorite color was and why?
Probably Indigo which he added to the visble spectrum in order to make it an
nice mystical seven colours, instead of red, orange, yellow, green, blue,
violet.
--
Dirk
The Consensus:-
The political party for the new millennium
http://www.theconsensus.org
Jeffery
news:<bii79u$8sj$1...@pcls4.std.com>...
> I have heard it said that the man published more than one million
> words, so his favorite might be out there somewhere.
He wrote over a million words on alchemy alone. He published very
little, and would not have even published his theories on gravity and
optics unless he had been pressured to do so. You wonder what would
have happened if he had never published anything.
Jeffery
bob cannetti
The reason I asked was because my high school physics teacher asked us
this question for an extra credit homework assignment. He says the
answer is crimson and I would be interested in knowing where this bit
of trivia is published.
John Cordes
Have a look at James Gleick's recent biography of Newton - especially
the last chapter, I think.
Uncle Al
Michael White, "Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer" Fourth Estate (1997)
ISBN 1857024168
James Gleick, "Isaac Newton" Pantheon (2003) ISBN: 0375422331
An essential part of everybody's education is learning how to use
Google. Content doesn't exist without an index (woe be he who takes
the talmudic route to finding stuff).
--
Uncle Al
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/eotvos.htm
(Do something naughty to physics)
Stephen Speicher
> Does anyone know what Newton's favorite color was and why?
>
Considering that this was posted to the research group, I will
assume you are asking a serious question, not to be followed by
something like "What was Newton's sign?" :)
In my readings of Newton I do not recall him ever directly
expressing the notion of his favorite color, but he did express a
sense of admiration for some light which was "perfectly white."
Newton's words in this regard are to be found in his "New theory
about light and colors," _Philosophical Transactions_, No. 80,
pp. 3075-3087, February 19, 1672. Below I have reproduced the
appropriate paragraph, converting Newtonian Old English into a
more recognizable form.
"But the most surprising, and wonderful composition was
that of whiteness. There is no one sort of rays which
alone can exhibit this. 'Tis ever compounded, and to
its composition are requisite all the aforesaid primary
colors, mixed in a due proportion. I have often with
admiration beheld, that all the colors of the prism
being made to converge, and thereby to be again mixed
as they were in the light before it was incident upon
the prism, reproduced light, entirely and perfectly
white, and not at all sensibly differing from a direct
light of the Sun, unless when the glasses, I used, were
not sufficiently clear; for then they would a little
incline it to their color."
Newton's 1672 paper has been reproduced in various forms. One
such facsimile of the original paper is to be found in "Discovery
of the Dispersion of Light and of the Nature of Color," George
Sarton, _Isis_, Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 326-341, October 1930.
--
Stephen
s...@speicher.com
Ignorance is just a placeholder for knowledge.
Printed using 100% recycled electrons.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Stephen Speicher
In a previous response (which, as of this writing, has still not
been posted) I made a case for Newton choosing white. I am
currently reading James Gleick's new book, "Isaac Newton," and
therein Gleick vindicates your teacher. In the Notes section of
the book, Gleick references "Richard de Villamil in 1931 ("Newton
the Man, pp. 14-15), after analyzing his household inventory:
"...crimson mohairs nearly everywhere. Newton's own bed
was a 'crimson mohair bed,' with 'crimson Harrateen'
bed curtains ... 'crimson mohair hangings' ... a
'crimson satee.' In fact, there is no other colour
referred to in the 'Inventary' but crimson."
(Note that I am quoting from an advance, unedited copy I have of
Gleick's book, so these words should be checked against the final
copy of the book.)
John E. Prussing
Please ask your high school physics teacher how he knows this and let
us know. If credit is granted for an answer in a physics course, there
should be solid evidence of what is correct.
--
John E. Prussing
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Department of Aerospace Engineering
http://www.uiuc.edu/~prussing
Theo
> nice mystical seven colours, instead of red, orange, yellow, green, blue,
> violet.
I'm afraid even the great one got it wrong. I once counted 8 colours
much to my surprise from the refraction from a prism. I noticed a
distinct cyan in between the blue and green.
Obviously given certain restrictions in the resolving power of the eye
and the ability of the brain to detect differing hues, there should be
many more than just 7 or 8. So why do we persist with the myth of 7
colours in the spectrum?
Lets take a step back and rationalise the problem as such... given 3
primary colours in a colour wheel, and with orange and yellow situated
in between red and green primaries, and indigo and violet in between
blue and red... what are the two colours in between green and blue? In
total therefore we should have 3 primary + plus 3*2 secondary colours
given a total of 9 colours in the rainbow!!!
When I noticed cyan... which lies in-between green and blue, I took a
closer look and found the 9th colour. What should we call it? How
about Newton's Blue!
Jeffery
[unnecessary quoted text deleted by overworked moderator]
> Obviously given certain restrictions in the resolving power of the eye
> and the ability of the brain to detect differing hues, there should be
> many more than just 7 or 8. So why do we persist with the myth of 7
> colours in the spectrum?
Well seven is the most famous number in numerology, (seven days of the
week, seven wonders of the world, the seven seas, breaking a mirror
gives you seven years of bad luck) so that would explain why people
say seven. Nine is also a significant number in numerology (the nine
hells of Dante, a cat has nine lives) so they could have said nine,
although nine isn't as famous as seven.
In reality how many colors are there? Color is really the wavelength.
The smallest possible length is the planck length. Therefore,
wavelength has to be quantized in intervals of the planck length. From
that, you calculate the real number of colors in the visible spectrum.
What is the smallest and largest possible wavelengths for
electromagnetic radiation? The smallest length is the planck length,
and the largest length is the horizon distance, but I don't think
there are physical mechanisms that could produce electromagnetic
radiation with wavelengths as short as the planck length or as long as
the horizon distance.
Jeffery Winkler
[Moderator's note: Some people like there to be 7 colors because
there are also 7 notes in the major scale, permitting all sorts of
synaesthetic analogies. I don't know if this was one of Newton's
original motivations, though. - jb]
Tim S
> Jeffery wrote:
>
>> In reality how many colors are there? Color is really the wavelength.
>
> No, it really isn't. "Color" is what the brain makes out of the
> signals the photoreceptors in the eye deliver.
That certainly is more relevant to what people see with only their native
colour perception to rely on.
<Snip physiology of colour perception>
>
> That was the physiological approach. You can also come from
> the side of psychology and ask: How many colors are perceived,
> for some unspecified but supposedly very profound reason, as
> "really different" (as opposed to "some kind of mixture")?
>
> Then you end up with the three "pure colors": Red, Blue, Yellow.
> Many people spontaneously add "Green", but admit after thinking
> about it that Green is "really" a mixture of Blue and Yellow.
Apparently this is an artifact of people learning about mixing paints.
More sensitive psychological tests make it clear that people perceive
green as a distinct colour along with red, blue and yellow. Colour
perception is thought to work like this:
There are three kinds of narrow-spectrum visual pigment in the cone
cells of the retina: the short-wavelength B, mid-wavelength G and long
wavelength R (usually known as alpha, beta and gamma -- there's a lot of
overlap between the last two).
In the brain, these are fed into two 'opponent processes', the
'red-green' and 'blue-yellow' processes. Red is enhanced by the R and B
receptors, and suppressed by the G receptor, while green is the other
way round. Yellow is enhanced by the R and G receptors and suppressed by
B, while blue is the other way round.
Note that the extreme blue end of the spectrum will therefore have a
reddish tinge -- Newton's 'violet'.
This idea was originally proposed by Ewald Hering in the 19th century on
the basis of introspection, but has been confirmed by various
psychological tests more recently. There's also some evidence of actual
nerve cells in the thalamus showing the predicted behaviour. (Of course
there are extra details which make the whole thing more complex than
I've described it.)
White is perceived with low-saturation colours -- when none of red,
green, yellow or blue is very active. Moderate-saturation colours appear
to be a mixture of white and one or more of the others.
Black is perceived in regions which are darker than their surroundings,
and again can be seen as mixed with other colours (e.g. black+yellow
appears brown).
Since the visual system is mainly trying to extract reflectances of
objects rather than the absolute spectrum of incoming light, it tries to
mod out by the average spectrum over a wider region of the visual field,
which I think may be the cause of illusory contrast colours.
This info comes from "Color categories in thought and language", C L
Hardin & Luisa Maffi (eds.), Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Colour perception is pretty complicated. And language is a whole other
layer of complexity on top of that -- there's been a lot of research
done on colour words in various languages and cultures, showing some
interesting patterns and some funny variations. Given Newton's
involvement in alchemy, it's not so surprising he thought the number
seven had a special significance. On the other hand, he knew nothing
about colour perception and very little about the underlying nature of
light, so we shouldn't be too hard on him.
Tim
Theo
> [Moderator's note: Some people like there to be 7 colors because
> there are also 7 notes in the major scale, permitting all sorts of
> synaesthetic analogies. I don't know if this was one of Newton's
> original motivations, though. - jb]
Though I do not profess expertise in the field even though I do play
piano and guitar, but I believe the 7 note scale is mainly a middle
eastern/western idea of a music scale, wereas eastern music is
dominated by a pentatonic (5 note) scale. So I guess it could have
gone either way. We could easily have had a 5 colour rainbow.
Stephen Speicher
On 11 Sep 2003, Jeffery wrote:
> th...@eisa.net.au (Theo) wrote:
>
> > Obviously given certain restrictions in the resolving power of the eye
> > and the ability of the brain to detect differing hues, there should be
> > many more than just 7 or 8. So why do we persist with the myth of 7
> > colours in the spectrum?
>
> Well seven is the most famous number in numerology, (seven days of the
> week, seven wonders of the world, the seven seas, breaking a mirror
> gives you seven years of bad luck) so that would explain why people
> say seven....
>
> [Moderator's note: Some people like there to be 7 colors because
> there are also 7 notes in the major scale, permitting all sorts of
> synaesthetic analogies. I don't know if this was one of Newton's
> original motivations, though. - jb]
>
Bingo!
"With the Center O [Figure of progressively lettered
color wheel omitted] and Radius OD describe a Circle
ADF, and distinguish its Circumference into seven parts
DE, EF, FG, GA, AB, BC, CD, proportional to the seven
Musical Tones or Intervals of the eight Sounds, Sol,
la, fa, sol, la, mi, sol, contained in an
eight[octave], that is, proportional to the Number 1/9,
1/16, 1/10, 1/9, 1/16**, 1/16, 1/9, Let the first part
DE represent a red Colour, ..."
--Isaac Newton, "Opticks," 4th Edition, 1730, Book One,
Part II, Prop. VI, Prob. II, p. 154 in _Dover
Publications, Inc._, 1952/1979.
** Newton's fifth value, 1/16, is actually inconsistent with the
symmetry of Newton's scale. The correct value should be 1/10. It
is not known why Newton changed the proportion in this case.
Charles Francis
<th...@eisa.net.au> writes
>> [Moderator's note: Some people like there to be 7 colors because
>> there are also 7 notes in the major scale, permitting all sorts of
>> synaesthetic analogies. I don't know if this was one of Newton's
>> original motivations, though. - jb]
In fact a chromatic scale is based on the twelfth root of two, and
consists of twelve equally spaced notes.
>Though I do not profess expertise in the field even though I do play
>piano and guitar, but I believe the 7 note scale is mainly a middle
>eastern/western idea of a music scale, wereas eastern music is
>dominated by a pentatonic (5 note) scale. So I guess it could have
>gone either way. We could easily have had a 5 colour rainbow.
And, as I lead to believe, in China, they do. The choice of seven as
magic number appears to predate both the naming of colours in the
rainbow and the west, as does the choice of five as the magic number in
the east.
Regards
--
Charles Francis