Our idea of “warm” colors is just a historical accident. Wood burns orange because it produces soot, which glows orange in the flame. Same applies to candles too, because there’s never enough oxygen to burn all the carbon.
If we’d started with purified hydrocarbons instead, blue might have been the ultimate “warm” color. Natural gas burns with a blue or even invisible flame, a sign of complete combustion. Orange, then, would be the color of flawed, struggling fire.
Imagine a house heated and lit by a gas furnace instead of a traditional fireplace. The light from the fire would be blue, and we’d associate that glow with warmth and coziness. Picture old paintings with a cozy atmosphere, their hearths glowing blue. If everyone grew up like that, blue would be the warmest color instead of orange.
“Different flame types of a Bunsen burner depend on oxygen supply. On the left a rich fuel with no premixed oxygen produces a yellow sooty diffusion flame; on the right a lean fully oxygen premixed flame produces no soot and the flame color is produced by molecular radicals, especially CH and C2 band emission.”
Source: Wikipedia
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I don’t think so.
Just look up at a clear sky. It’s blue with a orange circle and it’s very obvious that the orange circle is where all the warmth comes from. Pretty sure people figured that out before they even invented fire.
So it never stood a chance.
Oh that is a good point. The sun really is pretty orange. Long before the first fire, people probably associated orange and yellow with warmth.
However, cultural associations can change over time. What we consider warm is largely sustained by old paintings and pictures. Modern day artists use orange to convey a warm atmosphere, and that’s why the idea of orange as a warm color persists.
People don’t really use fire that much any more, so realistically speaking, warmth doesn’t even have a color today.
I’m going to add to the sun point, and remark that the cool range of tones is associated with snow and ice, since these reflect the blue of the sky. So even if people didn’t need fire to cook or live their lives at all, they would associate the blue ranges with winter.
Water in its liquid state also looks blue, and is usually associated with something refreshing in warm areas. So even in the tropics you would have a reason for associating blues with cools.
In contrast, most desert areas are naturally in orange ranges. You can also argue autumn forests would look orange and they’re not exactly warm, but the light in an autumn forest doesn’t bounce as much or as tinged compared to light conditions in desert areas, where the soil or sand is yellow or orange -red, and where whatever casting a shadow is probably the ground itself.
Finally, human bodies are more in a warm range tone (no matter the skin color) when compared to the same body suffering cold. Nails and lips take on a bluish hue, so do fingertips.
I think you would need to tweak your universe a little bit more to achieve a reversal in color association.
Those are some pretty solid points! Especially the one about healthy vs. freezing skin tone.
Those substances are blue due to Rayleigh scattering, not because they reflect the sky
The highest energy (shortest) wavelengths scatter first, so out of visible light blue is the first scattered colour
People use fire to cook with all around the world several times a day.
Not forgetting people who have fires and stoves etc too warm their homes and that.
What are you on about?
Developed countries with electricity and district heating. What you’re saying still applies to the rest of the world though.
The sun is white at mid day
Ok, so white should be the warmest color if you just stick with natural and easy to observe examples. Sunrise can be pretty nice and warm after a cold night though, so in a narrower sense red/orange/yellow could still be considered warm. However, during sunset, it gets cooler again, so the same colors would be cold compared to midday white. It gets a bit messy.
The sun is, by definition, white. White is what we call it when an object reflects all spectra of sunlight.
It’s only at sunrise / sunset when the atmosphere filters out more of the blue spectrum that it apparently turns more orange/red.
The sun is, by definition, white
White light is light that contains all visible wavelengths at the roughly the same proportions. The sun has nothing to do with this definition.
Our sun is actually slightly greenish-blue as that is where it’s peak (visible) output is.
White light is light that contains all visible wavelengths at the roughly the same proportions.
The key word there is “visible”. Our eyes adapted to the spectra of our star when filtered by our atmosphere. We perceive that spectra as white.
Actually…
our eyes adapted way back when our ancestors were fish. So we see light in the range that light passes best under water.Our perception is limited and our understanding has long outgrown it. White light, by definition is all visible light at equal intensity, thus the sun is NOT white.
Use RGB codes for example. White, by definition would be 255, 255, 255.
The Sun is more like 245, 253, 255 or something … still looks white enough to us, but by definition, isn’t.
Can we agree it’s not orange? That is what I was originally pointing out.
From a physical standpoint, sure.
But I’m pretty sure that if you casually ask most people which colour the sun is, you’ll hear yellow/orange much more often than white. So for the context of which colour was, prehistorically, associated with warmth I think yellow/orange are the more relevant answers.
Not quite. “Warmer” colors actually heat things up more. There’s a reason why heat lamps produce red or infrared light.
Hmm… I didn’t think about black body radiation that much. The filaments in a toaster really are red/orange/yellow when hot. I wonder what it would take to to squeeze blue out of black body radiation. Theoretically, it should be possible. Probably thousands of degrees… I think we’re moving into plasma physics territory at this point. Regular filaments just wouldn’t be able to handle blue light production. Electric arcs are blue though, and that plasma is pretty hot. Such an edge case, but still…
I think you’re missing the point a bit. I’m talking about how much heat different wavelengths of light transfer.
There’s an interesting experiment you can do if you have the right equipment: take the classic experiment where you produce a rainbow with a prism. Then, take a sensitive thermometer and go along the spectrum. The red end of the spectrum will be the warmest (unless you go even further, the area beyond that will be even warmer from the infrared), the blue end the coldest (although still warmer than the surroundings).
Oh ok. So when the peak of the emission spectrum is in the IR range, the visible color will definitely be closer to red or orange. The amount of blue light emitted in that case will be very low. That’s what the thermometer experiment can definitely demonstrate clearly.
However, if the black body is hot enough that the peak is in the blue wavelength band, then the total IR output should also be pretty high, just like everything else is at that point. I wonder if it’s even higher than in the first example. Would need to calculate that properly… Anyway there will also be a fair bit of UV, so don’t try this at home. Maybe even some x-rays if the arc is hot enough.
As far as traditional carbon-arc lamps are concerned, people at the time wrote that the light was white. Maybe the arc was not hot enough or be perceived as blue. Also, the human eye is not particularly sensitive at those wavelengths, so that could explain some of it too.
If you are familiar with queer cinema, it is.
LOL. With a poster like that, I expect blue to be a pretty hot color.
Except that humanity absolutely did not possess the necessary technology to have it this way.
Humanity may not have, but there are (admittedly very few) natural blue flames:
Hmm… There’s nothing quite like the smell of sulfur dioxide in the morning.
Fair enough.
I always thought that Martians would have their traffic lights the other way around. Green is calm since it’s associated with plants, and Mars is obviously covered in red foliage - just look at it! Meanwhile red is a warning since it is the colour of blood and we’re programmed to pay attention when we see blood for obvious reasons. But everyone knows Martians (like most aliens) bleed green. So their traffic lights must have opposite colours from ours.
Yeah, these cultural associations can get pretty wild. So, would you wear black or white at a funeral? Depends on the cultural context.
That’s why I wore a zebra-striped shirt to the last one I went to
As a bonus, you won’t ever get invited to any boring events again. It’s a win-win for everyone!
Haha 😂
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Europe - final countdown
Oh-oh, we’re heading for Venus (Venus)
And still, we stand tall
'Cause maybe they’ve seen us
And welcome us all, yeah
With so many light years to goWait, what? You’re heading for Venus, and you have many light years to go? This song was clearly written by aliens. I rest my case.
We have two “blue hours” and two “golden hours” a day, and they have associated temperature differences.
