There Is No Pink - Bella Eye Care Optometry

Here is a fun fact we bet you didn’t know. You remember that pink blouse or shirt you own? Or perhaps the pink flamingos you see in a neighbor’s yard? Or the pink flowers you get every year for St Valentine’s Day? Pink is a great color, isn’t it? The problem is, pink doesn’t really exist. Pink as a singer is pretty darn good though. The primary colors we all see (ok…some of us are colorblind) is red, green, and blue. Every color we see is a combination of those three light colors.

In the design world, we talk of additive colors and subtractive colors. In the additive world, when we add every color of light together, we get white. When we subtract every color, we get night, or black. If you think back hard enough, you probably remember some of your science classes back in high school or college in which you recreated Newton’s experiments of splitting light into colors with a prism. If you going to try it again, you will notice that the spectrum goes from red on one side, turning to yellow, then green, then blue, then violet….but no pink.  Pink does not exist as a wavelength but is instead a combination of red and blue, which are at opposite ends of the spectrum.

So what is pink? The simplest explanation is to call pink another name, minus green. Pink is white light, minus green. So next time you go shopping for a great shirt or blouse, be sure to ask what’s new in the minus green department and share this little bit of trivia with your friends and family.