[HN Gopher] How School Buses Became Yellow (2019)
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How School Buses Became Yellow (2019)
Author : jelliclesfarm
Score : 22 points
Date : 2022-12-22 11:25 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.smithsonianmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.smithsonianmag.com)
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Semi related: it appears that rods are most sensitive to cyan-
| green light (498 nm), which makes me wonder if using such light
| would give you the best results in situations where seeing fine
| details is important, but color differentiation generally isn't.
| sparrish wrote:
| This is a long standing argument in our family.
|
| I say they're more orange than yellow.
|
| Wife says they're more yellow than orange.
|
| The battle continues.
| layer8 wrote:
| People differ in the sensitivity of their cones, I believe. I
| wonder if that explains such disagreements, or whether it's
| merely linguistic.
|
| To me it's a warm yellow, by the way. It's much closer in color
| to a banana than to an orange.
| psidebot wrote:
| Looking at the pantone color it appears more yellow to me. I
| have seen a lot of minor regional variation though, especially
| when weathering affects things, so they may be orangier in your
| area. You could always say they're yellange.
| hammock wrote:
| >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?
| AlexanderDhoore wrote:
| There isn't much overlap with the blue cone. See picture at
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_cell
| hammock wrote:
| 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
| dylan604 wrote:
| 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?
| HPsquared wrote:
| 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.
| hammock wrote:
| 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.
| mncharity wrote:
| > 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.
| jareklupinski wrote:
| Does this mean blue-orange movie posters are just trying to
| spam our cones?
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