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  • We've all been told that the colors of the rainbow correspond to different wavelengths

  • of visible light - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. Where's pink in that list?

  • It's not there. There's simply no pink light.

  • So where does pink come from? It turns out that pink, (or magenta, fuchsia, or whatever

  • you want to call it) is actually a mix of red and blue light - light from both ends

  • of the rainbow that our brains see as one color.

  • If you try to roll up the rainbow to make a color wheel, there'll be a gap between red

  • and blue. That's where all of the rest of the light in the universe is supposed to go

  • - radio waves, microwaves, infrared, ultraviolet, x-rays, gamma rays, and so on. But since we

  • can't see any of those wavelengths, we replace all that hidden grandeur with pink.

  • And speaking in terms of light, pink should probably be called "minus-green", because

  • pink is what's left over from white light when you take out the green.

We've all been told that the colors of the rainbow correspond to different wavelengths

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