They are colors that can’t be created by a mixture. The Secondary colors are Orange, Purple and Green. They are the ‘children’ of each pair of Primary colors. Tertiary colors are the six ‘in-between’ colors.

Explain that unlike sound, light waves travel fastest through a vacuum and air, and slower through other materials such as glass or water.

violet

There was no blue, not in the way that we know the color — it wasn’t distinguished from green or darker shades. If you think about it, blue doesn’t appear much in nature — there are almost no blue animals, blue eyes are rare, and blue flowers are mostly human creations.

“When artists’ paints are mixed together, some light is absorbed, making colors that are darker and duller than the parent colors. Painters’ subtractive primary colors are red, yellow and blue. These three hues are called primary because they cannot be made with mixtures of other pigments.”

Color Basics

• Three Primary Colors (Ps): Red, Yellow, Blue.
• Three Secondary Colors (S’): Orange, Green, Violet.
• Six Tertiary Colors (Ts): Red-Orange, Yellow-Orange, Yellow-Green, Blue-Green, Blue-Violet, Red-Violet, which are formed by mixing a primary with a secondary.

They are so named because the red cone cells mostly detect red light, the green cone cells mostly detect green light, and the blue cone cells mostly detect blue light. Therefore, even though humans do not have yellow cone cells, we can still see yellow light when it triggers a red cone cell and a green cone cell.

Each type of cone is maximally stimulated by a particular wavelength of light, and these wavelengths roughly correspond to red, green, and blue light. When all three cones are stimulated equally, our brain interprets that at white light. So white = Red+Green+Blue = All colors, which is reflected with a prism.

Orange, green and purple are the secondary colors. A secondary color is made by mixing two primary colors.