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phetsims / color-vision

"Color Vision" is an educational simulation in HTML5, by PhET Interactive Simulations.
http://phet.colorado.edu/en/simulation/color-vision
GNU General Public License v3.0
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Manually creating "white light" does not show white light? #79

Closed orejolaphet closed 9 years ago

orejolaphet commented 10 years ago

I attempted to create white light in the Single Bulb screen, as It is just a combination of a bunch of different wavelengths of light (RGB).

I ran through a process of pressing pause, then turning on the light bulb with variable Bulb Color. From there I selected some random color then clicked "next frame" and then another color then "next frame" again. I did this process enough times with enough varied color in a RGB range. Hoping that the white light would be perceived, instead the thought bubble just flashed a bunch of different colors. colorvs

aaronsamuel137 commented 9 years ago

I don't think this functionality exists in the java version either. Adding this functionality would be a little tricky, so I'd recommend against it unless its really part of the intended learning outcomes. Assigning to @ariel-phet for feedback.

ariel-phet commented 9 years ago

It is a very cool experiment that @orejolaphet tried.I gave this some thought, and in a sense, flashing a bunch of different colors is really the correct response. The model of the sim is showing light moving towards the eye at a much slowed down rate. The way @orejolaphet created this light was sampling different light colors and allowing time to step forward before the next sampling. So really this light is not "white light"....it is not a mix of colors, it is the color varying randomly in time. Of course, our optical perception would likely perceive such light as white given the actual speed of photons.

I think we can accept this as a inherent to the model (and a limitation of the model used in the sim).