4.22.2014

bp's science: what color blindness is like

Around here, we deal with pinks and light blues looking grey and greens and oranges looking brown.  Color blindness is just part of life and we certainly don't mind.  In fact, I think that it is cool and I love it.  It doesn't hurt either that color blind individuals tend to see better at night and can better distinguish objects in camouflage.

Recently, I was looking at an excellent site that shows those of us who see normal colors what a color blind person sees.  See below:

normal vision
[most common form of color blindness] deuteranomaly (reduced sensitivity to)/deuteranopia (unable to perceive) green light
protanomaly (reduced sensitivity to)/protanopia (unable to perceive) red light
[rare from of color blindness] tritanomaly (reduced sensitivity to)/tritanopia (unable to perceive) blue light

Fascinating, enlightening, eh?  See here or here for more info.

5 comments:

jo said...

Very interesting. I enjoyed the photos. I've always wondered what it might be like. It really is fascinating. And I bet fun for you to study!

Angie said...

Interesting. How do they know what it looks like for color blind people?

Chap said...

Nice. I wondered what it must have been like to be color blind or blind to different shades of color. Vance

Chap said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
ash said...

Angie, I think that since they know that color blindness is caused by weak cones or a lack of certain cones, and certain cones perceive different types of light, they can take a photo and use a lens to cancel out the red, green, or blue light, thus creating what a color blind person sees. I showed these photos to a color blind person and sure enough, the normal photo and one of the color blind photos (according to the type of light the person has a hard time perceiving or cannot see at all) looked the same. So interesting.