this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2026
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.

Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:

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Applies to many other colors as well. I "understand" why that is but it hurts my brain to think about.

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[–] musicalphysics@discuss.online 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Colors aren’t physical. There is no way to measure color. We can measure frequency, wavelength, or energy. So there isn’t any light that is yellow at all. There is light, or combinations of light, that we perceive to be yellow but that is simply a construction of the mind.

[–] surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago (2 children)

There's no strictly defined set of wavelengths for yellow. But you could pick a random wavelength and as long as most people say it's yellow, that's a yellow wavelength.

[–] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago

Yellow is between 590 and 610nm.

[–] musicalphysics@discuss.online 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

You can call it whatever you want but color isn’t a physical property of light. It is a construction of the mind. You claim a certain wavelength is yellow. A computer display can show a combination of red and green pixels that we perceive to be the same shade of yellow even though the original yellow wavelength isn’t present at all. Color isn’t from the light itself but from our mind.

[–] surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Correct. You can't measure yellow, you can only classify yellow.

In the same way we classify all sorts of things. Types of planets. Types of animals. Races of people.

But that doesn't mean you can say there's no such thing as yellow light. That's like saying there's no such thing as dogs because there's no Internet dog property to measure.

Semi-Subjective classification exists within science and within our language. It is a real thing. And so there IS such a thing as yellow light.

[–] musicalphysics@discuss.online 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The color yellow subjectively exists. Like I said at the beginning, color is a product of the mind. Objectively, as in is it directly measurable, light has no color. Physics deals with objective measurements.

[–] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Objectively yellow is between 590 and 610nm.

More bad news, there are displays that are RYGB, made by Sharp.

I don’t see how a RYGB monitor is bad news.

How does one objectively measure color?

If color is in light then why do people see yellow from an RGB monitor when no yellow light is present? If color is a physical property of light how do we see color? Do the chemicals in our cones see/respond to color? How? How is color detected by chemicals in our eye transmitted to the brain? Does electricity also support color? If so, how?