Anya Cappon Blog post 2: Beauty in Science


Beauty in Science: The Color blue


Colors are important. They are so important that we have our favorite ones, we pick colors to surround ourselves in, and we only wear the colors that we like best. We convince our selves that colors mean incredibly specific things. Although it may sound obvious, the primary colors that make up our beautiful and vibrant world are red, yellow, and blue. Seeing as these three colors make up all the other colors that we know, it seems impossible to live in a world where one of these colors does not exist. However, this is precisely the case in our history. The color blue was the last of the colors to be identified. In the history of many languages, the color blue did not even exist. Some isolated tribes and communities today favor the color green to blue when it comes to color.


Color is not something that can be discovered, so why was there a point when we didn't know what blue was? We do have an understanding of how our eyes work, which helps us to understand why we're not able to comprehend blue. We all have rods and cones in our eyes; the rods are responsible for our sensitivity to light and dark, while the cones are responsible for the way we see color. There are about 6 million cones in an eye, and these cones are divided into three categories, red (64%), green (32%) and blue only 2% (Rods and Cones). The blue cones make up a small portion of the cones, but we have no trouble seeing blue. The location of the blue cones is separate from the red and green cones they sit outside of what is called the Fovia. Blue light cones are strange, because of their light ray index, and because of there location, the color blue in the physical will always be slightly out of focus (Rods and Cones.)

William the Hippo 4000-year-old Eyptionion artifact (On display at the Met)



Egyptian blue pigment 


Perhaps it is difficult for us to comprehend a world without blue because we can produce any pigment artificially, whether that be digital or with chemicals. Blue was first distinguished from other colors in Eygpt in 2,200 BC, in the form of pigment making. The combination of limestone and copper produced a blue pigment. The next notable moment for blue was in 15th-century Europe when the church gave Saint Mary the color blue; her robes were to be painted blue. This required the expensive and highly sought after ultramarine blue that was imported from Egypt( Anderson, Kelli, and Shovava.)These were the first cases of discovering how to produce a new color, that was not that easy to find in the natural world.




Workshop of Gerard David (Netherlandish, Oudewater ca. 1455–1523 Bruges)





By learning to reproduce color, we have gained control over a lot of the beauty in our world. In creating dyes and pigments, we have given the colors that we produce in the physical world equal value We have all continued to produce artificial colors using technology to swatch colors and create pigments and dye, whether they exist virtually or physically.

The science in the beauty of color is understanding the way our eyes process light and realizing that we have the ability and understanding to reproduce color. We are now able to see colors that do not exist in the natural world.
CMYK color wheel

Work Cited 

Anderson, Kelli, and Shovava. “The History of the Color Blue: From Ancient Egypt to the Latest Scientific Discoveries.” My Modern Met, 12 Mar. 2018, mymodernmet.com/shades-of-blue-color-history/.

“Rods and Cones.” The Rods and Cones of the Human Eye, hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/vision/rodcone.html.




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