What I mean is, suppose white light falls on a red object and is reflected, so when we see the reflected light reaches our eyes we see it as red (probably because its wavelength corresponds to red). But let's say that this reflected light falls on a purple object and then reaches our eye. What color would we perceive of the purple object? If the answer is purple, then where did the extra energy come from? ( as purple light has more energy than red)
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6Does this answer your question? Green light on red article – Bill N Jul 26 '20 at 02:15
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3By the way, purple objects reflect a mixture primarily of red, blue and violet-range wavelengths. – Bill N Jul 26 '20 at 02:17
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1Reflected light is a subtractive process. The initial white light is a mixture of many wavelengths including red and blue and maybe but not necessarily violet. Most of the time when we perceive "purple" we're seeing a mixture of red and blue, not actual violet light. Don't worry if it is confusing at first, the topic of color perception is a little bit counter-intuitive. Eyes take a linear spread of energies and wrap them into a circular color wheel and this is a never-ending source of confusion at first – uhoh Jul 26 '20 at 02:17
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1I can't exactly explain why the right mixture of red light plus blue light can appear to be the same color as violet light, but I think an explanation can begin with color matching functions – uhoh Jul 26 '20 at 02:22
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This may help. Can you create white light by combining cyan wavelengths (490-520nm) with red wavelengths (630-700nm)? – mmesser314 Jul 26 '20 at 02:42
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1It would be worth your time and effort to figure out a set of experiments to answer your questions. – S. McGrew Jul 26 '20 at 03:21