Science Memes
Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
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- Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
- Keep it rooted (on topic).
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- Infographics welcome, get schooled.
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Memes
Miscellaneous
I appreciate the skittles reference
Is it a skittles reference or is it a reference to purple not being an actual color and thus not a part of the rainbow?
the heck do you mean purple is not an actual colour??
Purple, the color directly between red and blue, is a creation of your mind interpreting a band of light that triggers your red and blue sensing nerves, but no green is sensed. The actual band of light we can see goes from red to green to blue. Purple doesn't fall between those colors, meaning it wouldn't be included in a rainbow, and isn't any "pure" light you could see, since it doesn't fall on the spectrum.
Essentially, any time you see purple, you're seeing two different frequencies of light that your mind interprets as a single frequency.
What is violet at the end of the visible spectrum, then? We call the higher wavelength stuff ultraviolet, and violet looks purple to me, so I'm having trouble reconciling this stuff with what you're saying.
We call it that but our eyes see the far end frequency as a colour that only very slightly activates blue sensitive cone receptors and no others. For red sensitive cones there is a slight bump in the high end frequencies also that makes it possible for them to look violet as it activates the blue sensitive and a bit of red sensitive receptors but a much purpler purple is made by combining high and low frequencies.
Would this not disqualify any mixed color? We only have receptors for three colors, and if we're arguing that purple isn't a color because it's actually two mixed together, that should also mean colors like orange, yellow, cyan, magenta, atc are also not colors by that definition right?
ah a similar explanation to why yellow is not an actual colour either
the silly explanation that has no effect on how we perceive, use, or think about colour. sigh why are the people responsible for those studies calling those colours not real? Why not just colours resulting from mixing other colours like the artists have done since the invention of paint?
Sorry for the confusion. Yellow is a single wavelength of light. We perceive it with the green and red receptors in our eyes, but it is a single wavelength. Purple isn't a single wavelength, but two that are being interpreted as a color.
That was the distinction I was calling out.
and that is why i didn't say the same explanation, but similar
both, in my opinion, suffer from the clickbait disease "YOU CAN'T SEE YELLOW 😱" (directly, because to see it you use two light receptors combined) "PURPLE DOESN'T EXIST 😱" (as a single wavelength colour because as opposed to the other colours of the rainbow it uses a combination of red and blue wavelengths)
i don't blame you for either of course, i'm just expressing my general annoyance with the phrasing of both science facts
Your definition of color is based only on human perception? Is purple a color for a mantis shrimp?
Edit: I guess not in a pure sense because it's still two wavelengths of light. Perhaps a mantis shrimp can detect a totally different wavelength and sees it as "purple" or something.
Now I'm thinking about how we don't know how other humans interpret colors. Like what I see as red, you may see as blue. Ugh.
Don't let them pee on your Cheerios. Purple is a color, just like magenta, pink, cyan, brown, and all the other "not in the rainbow/ROYGBIV" colors.
Gatekeeping colors, I tell ya. Don't let 'em get you burnt sienna with rage.
Seeing the creator write "actually," instead of "oh yeah?" somehow feels wrong.
This feels like a case where botanical science should just have picked a different name. If you invalidate everything people think of as a berry and then tell them a dozen things that are clearly not berries are, in fact, berries, you're just making the word berry meaningless.
Berry means a tiny, usually sweet, fruit-like growth from a plant. The kind that is usually picked in bunches. The kind that you use to make smoothies. That's a berry.
Botany did us all a disservice by choosing the word "berry" to mean "a specific thing which invalidates everything you think is a berry." Just call that plant structure something in Latin, ffs.
Well, cooking terms and botany terms are not the same. Any non reproductive part of a plant is vegetable. But in cooking we have a completely different idea of what vegetables are.
This really doesn't matter because most people are not botanists and those who are probably know the terms. The only people that care are quirky internet people with debates about weather or not potato salad should be considered a cake or something.
They did. It's Baca. Which means berry. Or maybe cow. Naming stuff is hard
Naming would be easier if we collectively review the names every few years and retire the BS.
That's because the scientific definition of berries has little in common with the colloquial one. That doesn't make either wrong, they are just used in different contexts
We really should rename botanical berries to something else.
The thing is, there is for sure some Latin technical term that you can use. And it's still close enough to berries to call them that.
Oh probably, but I don't speak latin. Most people don't speak latin; there's like 1000 people in the world maximum who could hold a conversation in latin.
I love it.
I know you didn't mean it, but this has the, "Do I LOOK like I speak Latin?" Energy and as a American, I'm all about that.
Lucky, I mean it is exactly the opposite way! Teach me some local languages, like Cree or Dene, maybe something Inuk.
I guess I am telling people to speak English though, aren't I? Well it's good to keep updated on the colonizer tongue I suppose.
Now get off my native grass lawn!
Botanical vs culinary.
A berry is a watery, often sweet fruit under 4cm
That is the colloquial definition. The scientific definition of a berry differs a bit.
Sometimes you feel like a peanut is not a nut!
Sometimes you don't!
I've willfully disregarded botanical terminology every since I learned it.
Bad practice, picking generic terms to define differently.
Scary-berry
Berry Wight