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Why Russians have two blues: how a colour word can speed up your eyes Russian has two basic words for blue, goluboy (light) and siniy (dark), and in a 2007 experiment Russian speakers were about 124 milliseconds faster at telling… Language4 min read27 Oct Why the sky is blue and the sunset red: Rayleigh scattering and the length of the air The sky is blue and the sunset is red, yet the sunlight is the same. Air scatters short blue waves about four times more strongly than long red ones, a… Physics4 min read25 Oct Why you stumble naming the ink of a clashing colour word: the Stroop effect Name the ink colour of the word GREEN printed in red and you stumble, even though the rule is trivial. In 1935 John Ridley Stroop timed it: naming the ink of… Mind3 min read23 Oct Why mild preferences can build a segregated town: Schelling's chequerboard Nobody in this town wants it split into blue and orange districts. Each household only asks that a few of its neighbours look like it. Yet run the rule and the… Economics4 min read15 Oct Why you can't ignore the word and name the colour: the Stroop effect Read the word, then name its ink colour: you can't turn reading off. In 1886 Cattell noticed that people read words faster than they name colours, and in 1935… Mind4 min read6 Oct Why soap bubbles swirl with colour, then turn black just before they pop Soap has no dye, yet bubbles shimmer with magenta, gold and green. The colour comes from thickness: light bounces off both the front and the back of the film… Physics5 min read28 Sep How chameleons change colour: they stretch a mirror made of crystals A chameleon doesn't change colour by mixing pigments. Under its skin sit cells packed with tiny guanine crystals, arranged in a lattice that works like a… Biology4 min read28 Sep Why the sky is blue and sunsets are red: it's the same light The blue sky and the red sunset are the same effect, seen from two angles. Air molecules scatter short, blue wavelengths far more than long, red ones: about… Physics4 min read27 Sep How computers fake grey using only black and white dots Old Mac screens, cheap printers and some modern games can only show two colours: black and white. Yet they still draw soft shadows and smooth skies. The trick… Computing5 min read26 Sep Why a rainbow is always a circle 42° around your shadow Every rainbow is part of a circle centred on the shadow of your head, with its red edge about 42° away. That number comes from inside a single raindrop… Physics5 min read26 Sep