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Comment by hammock | Hacker News Reader

>The best way to describe [the color] would be in wavelength,” says Schwab. The wavelength of the popular school-bus color is “right smack in the middle” of the peak wavelengths that stimulate the photoreceptor cells our eyes use to perceive red and green. The red and green photoreceptor cells, or “cones” as they are commonly known, are the two most predominant cones in our eyes. Schwab says, “If you get a pure wavelength of one color…and you hit just one cone with it, you’re going to have x amount of transmission of signal to the brain. But if that [wavelength] were to stimulate two cones, you’ll get double the amount of transmission to the brain.” Remarkably, “That color that we are calling school bus yellow hits both peaks equally.”

Curious, what is the color that would hit red and blue cones equally? What is the color that would hit green and blue cones equally?

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There isn't much overlap with the blue cone. See picture at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_cell

Makes sense thanks.

Also the actually intersection of the green and red curves looks more like 3M Safety Green to me (the yellowish hi-vis vests). I wonder if that’s how they developed that color

Doesn't the fact that they are UV reactive help them glow and appear brighter? If they used the same color with a non-UV reactive material, would they still seem as bright?

This makes me wonder: how would the world look if we genetically engineered our eyes (and brains too I guess) to have cones more evenly-spaced in the spectrum, perhaps even with 4 cones instead of 3?

> perhaps even with 4 cones instead of 3?

You may enjoy reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromacy#Humans

It seems that we've found one woman who is actually capable of using this (ctrl-f for subject cDa29)

This is how subtractive colour works.

Cyan = (White minus red) = (Green+Blue)

Magenta = (White minus green) = (Red+Blue)

Yellow = (White minus blue) = (Red+Green)

So if you lay perfect cyan, magenta and yellow pigments over each other you should get black (in theory).

EDIT: though, of course, there is no monochromatic "magenta wavelength". There is a cyan wavelength, though.

Yeah I get that I mean more specifically what shade of cyan or magenta. “Yellow” sure but according to the article, specifically National School Bus Yellow.

> according to the article, specifically National School Bus Yellow.

Yeah, no. I suggest skipping that paragraph. I read it first as demonstrating how rapidly quality of understanding can deteriorate as you move away from someone's areas of expertise. But on rereading, I could see how a non-science journalist might mangle someone's valid description that badly. And if the interviewee was Ivan (R) Schwab (of UCDavis), I'd lean towards a mangle.

I always thought neon green (not yellow) was the brightest color to the human eye.

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/500751/most-visible-colo...

Does this mean blue-orange movie posters are just trying to spam our cones?

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