COLOR: Perception Mismatch!

Ever wondered how colorful world is!

You see bluish sky ,greenish nature ,reddish blood ,... all ishes!!

But did you ever think if your friend sees all ishes(colors) same as you do?

Well to answer this question we should know how we see colors. Light is a electromagnetic wave, but we only see a part of electromagnetic wave i.e these wave differ in frequency [I think you know what is frequency!]. So when we see electromagnetic waves ranging from 430 to 770 THz, one of the wonder is our brain visualizes these waves as colors. Whenever you see EM-wave within this region, your brain visualizes it! This is called perception. When there are two EM- waves passing we see that in a different color (eg. Magenta). This is purely brain's trick.

Well can you assure your friend see the same as you? i.e for a particular frequency of light our brain matches it to a color. So whenever you see a bluish wavelength you see blue, a greenish wavelength you see green.

But what if someone ,may be your friend sees it different from birth?

What if my bluish wavelength appears as green to him? Do you think you can find it?

Looks pretty easy right! He is going to point green as blue and i am gonna find it! Oh really! think again!

If he sees that from his birth he is going to see blue as green, and when teacher teaches colors, she is gonna teach the blue as blue but our friend actually sees blue as green but knows it as blue.

So when he sees bluish frequency of light, he sees it greenish but knows it as blue. So if you ask him to choose blue he is going to choose objects emitting bluish wavelength appearing as green to him. So it looks like no way we are going to find it!

His perception of color for a particular EM wave's frequency is different from yours. Wait a second! then what if everyone sees color differently. Our sky bluish color appears reddish to someone, greenish to our friend and so on..

We got a situation to handle.... thinking......thinking.....

A great debate went between the wahtsappian friends of mine.

Well one argued logically there is no way to find it. But i couldn't accept that! We got our emotions closely related to colors. That's why we paint light colors in our home, green gives sense of freshness , sky blue gives you sense of freedom and so on (I don't know if colors are matched correctly to their emotions..)..

Human beings have been hunting for ages. They are going to see red blood as danger sign as it says someone has been killed or some hunting is going on. We got our senses saying alert when color goes red! So if someone is going to see red color as different color, one will feel good while the other will feel something else! Alright, feeling - psychology can be used to find color mismatch as the colors that create soothing to one's heart, may make another feel different. So analyzing the emotional response between normal color viewers and different color viewers may help in detecting this issue. Not satisfied with this answer?

Another way to think is our brain process. Assuming that normally, people see things commonly- the same, then we can record their brain's actions that matches a frequency of EM wave to a color and further responses to that color, making them see a frequency of light. Now testing it on our friend , we are going to get a different action in his brain while he is seeing the same frequency of EM wave and gotcha! We found him!

So the question is - are there any technology to actually identify this action in brain? Is there any other way possibly to find it? Am i seeing colors normally? and moreover, is there anything called 'normally and commonly' in colors?

Update: Here is another blog that explains colors and it's respective psychology.