Worksheet: In Living Color
Name_______________________________________ Date_________________________
Color Vision
Put X's in the table to indicate which cones in the retina of the eye are stimulated by each color of light.
| Color of light | Red | Green | Blue |
| Red | ______ | ______ | ______ |
| Black | ______ | ______ | ______ |
| Cyan | ______ | ______ | ______ |
| Blue | ______ | ______ | ______ |
| White | ______ | ______ | ______ |
| Magenta | ______ | ______ | ______ |
| Yellow | ______ | ______ | ______ |
| Green | ______ | ______ | ______ |
Color Television
What three colors are the tiny bars or dots on the screens
of color televisions and computer monitors? _________, ___________, ___________ .
Why are these three colors used?
How does the TV make yellow?
Write in the colors that you get when you mix these amounts of red, green, and
blue in the program RGBtoHEX:
| Red | Green | Blue | Resulting color |
| 0 | 0 | 0 | ____________ |
| 0 | 0 | 255 | ____________ |
| 0 | 255 | 0 | ____________ |
| 0 | 255 | 255 | ____________ |
| 255 | 0 | 0 | ____________ |
| 255 | 0 | 255 | ____________ |
| 255 | 255 | 0 | ____________ |
| 255 | 255 | 255 | ____________ |
3. Color Spotlights
What color do you get if you overlap red, green and blue spotlights of equal brightness? ______
Challenge question: Suppose there was a Christmas Tree that had equal numbers of red,
green, and blue lights, all equally bright. What color would this tree
seem to be if you looked at it at night from very far away, so that you could not see the individual
lights. Why?
Suppose the tree that had equal numbers of red, green, blue, yellow, and orange
lights, all equally bright?
What color would this tree seem to be from far away? Why?
4. Making more colors
How many different colors could you make if you limit yourself to three
values for each primary color - fully off (zero), half-on (127), and fully on (255)? _______
Complete the following table, entering 0, 127, or
255 under the Red, Green, and Blue columns to make all the different combinations.
Make
sure each color has a different name.
| Red | Green | Blue | Resulting color |
| ______ | ______ | ______ | _________________ |
| ______ | ______ | ______ | _________________ |
| ______ | ______ | ______ | _________________ |
| ______ | ______ | ______ | _________________ |
| ______ | ______ | ______ | _________________ |
| ______ | ______ | ______ | _________________ |
| ______ | ______ | ______ | _________________ |
| ______ | ______ | ______ | _________________ |
| ______ | ______ | ______ | _________________ |
| ______ | ______ | ______ | _________________ |
| ______ | ______ | ______ | _________________ |
| ______ | ______ | ______ | _________________ |
| ______ | ______ | ______ | _________________ |
| ______ | ______ | ______ | _________________ |
| ______ | ______ | ______ | _________________ |
| ______ | ______ | ______ | _________________ |
| ______ | ______ | ______ | _________________ |
| ______ | ______ | ______ | _________________ |
| ______ | ______ | ______ | _________________ |
| ______ | ______ | ______ | _________________ |
| ______ | ______ | ______ | _________________ |
| ______ | ______ | ______ | _________________ |
| ______ | ______ | ______ | _________________ |
| ______ | ______ | ______ | _________________ |
| ______ | ______ | ______ | _________________ |
| ______ | ______ | ______ | _________________ |
| ______ | ______ | ______ | _________________ |
Can you think of a common color that is not in this table? _______
Try to make it in RGBtoHEX.exe.
What mix of primary colors did it take? _________________
How many colors could be made if
you limit yourself to four values of each primary color?
5. What is the maximum number of colors that a computer can make?
If a computer uses 256 different values for each primary color, the total number
of color combinations it can make is _______ x _______ x _______ = ________________
Why
do computers make so many colors?
What is the difference between the two pictures of the green frog on the green leaf?
6. Color printing: Mixing colors with ink
How does mixing colors on paper with ink differ
from mixing colors of light on a TV screen?
When using the RGBtoHEX program, what happened when you removed one of the colors
from white (set its slider to zero) while leaving the other two colors at 255?
What are the "process primary colors"?
What colors are used in the ink cartridge of an ink-jet
computer printer?
In the Color Mixing Applet, what combination of ink colors and numbers do you need to create orange?
Why does color printing use different primary colors than color television
or the human eye? Why not use red, green, and blue inks for color printing?
7. Color painting: Mixing colors with paint
Why are cyan, magenta, and yellow
a better set of primary colors for mixing paint or ink than the traditional
combination of red, blue, and yellow?
Why did the painter George Seurat make his paintings with tiny dots of pure colour,
rather than mixing paints like other painters?
8. Color blindness
What is the most common type of color blindness?
Do boys or girls more commonly have some form of color blindness?
Were you able to see all the numbers in the color blindness test?