or do indigo and violet just confuse matters?

[HoratiaWinwood]

A rainbow is a spectrum of visible light, right? So there aren't distinct stripes of colour.

What the fuck is with distinguishing between indigo and violet? What do we lose by saying purple?

Fuck. That. Shit.

From now on I'm saying purple. Physics Life is complicated enough already.

But it is indigo - turning into violet. It's a spot on description.

Richard Of York Gave Battles In Vain

Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet.

Easy, innit?

I think of indigo as a bit more bluey and violet more purpley.

But then you can't use

Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain

to rememeber the colours of the rainbow. It would be a whole confusing mess. Best left as it is :)

But if you just called it purple, that would mess up the I remember the colours of the spectrum.

Richard - red
Of - orange
York - yellow
Grew - green
Bananas - blue
In - indigo
Vain - violet

What would P stand for? Poo?

But then what happens to

Red and hallow and pink and green. Purple and orange and blue?!

And by hallow I mean yellow

Mix violet and blue together and you get indigo.

So you're stuck with them really.

All sorts of colours are in the spectrum that we don't name when we are teaching preschoolers about rainbows.

Red and brickred and orange and yellow and mustard and yellow and green and turquoise and blue and indigo and violet is a tad unnecessary.

Did hear of a Y6 teacher who didn't know that there isn't any pink, though, and had to be told by her class.

Did you know that all rainbows are doubles, only the upside-down one is usually fainter so we don't always see it?

I remember from my days as a lab tech in a dye factory that there are as many as 6000 shades of black alone....

Same with other colours, too many shades.

Are they twins?

I have heard that there are actually not seven colours there - if you look it is six, red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple. Isaac Newton decided that it should be seven for obscure alchemy related reasons of his own and therefore split purple into two.

So hormonal rage is justified.

I understand the upside down rainbow is actually a reflection of the main rainbow.

Fucking Newton. That arsehole was enough trouble in A-Level Maths fucking mechanics - shudder) without arsing around with pwetty rainbows. Bastard.

I agree with the OP. My DC sing the mickey mouse rainbow song to remeber the order- that just mentions purple which I think is fine.

Interesting fact: In many languages light blue has its own word and is considered to be as much of a different colour to blue as green would be.

wiggly yes, including Russian, where pink is just pale red. Loons.

Sometimes you can see the indigo and violet quite distinctly.

This article will drive you nuts. I remember learning similar when I studies linguistics.

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110314132531.htm

oh yes I heard that about Newton making up colours too but I think I heard it was orange that he fitted in to make 7 and it was something to do with music scales

Wiki reckons that Newton added orange and indigo.

Orange isn't terribly useful to your medieval peasant.

Languages differ about how many colours they describe at a basic level. All languages distinguish between light and dark. Then if they have one more, it is red. Then one to three of blue, green and yellow. And so on. Utterly fascinating. Reflected in psychological understanding and recognition of colour which is cultural and not innate.

English does not basically distinguish between indigo and violet - the basic colour is purple. Newton can fuck the fuck off (etc).

Srsly though, is there a justification for indigo/violet other than "they are visible" in which case I want turquoise too.

Read Out Your Green Book In Verse is how I began to remember the colours of the rainbow. I don't see how we can argue with Newton's proposal of including indigo. He knew more than I do about this sort of thing.

GASLEAP is how I remember the seven deadly sins: greed, anger (wrath), sloth (laziness), lust, envy, avarice and pride.

I've thought this before - given it's a spectrum and you're only identifying the key colours in it why not just say purple. My mum wasn't impressed with my analysis though, I was probably about 10 at the time. I still think it holds water though :)