Blue | |||||||||
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Spectral coordinates | |||||||||
Wavelength | 450–495 nm | ||||||||
Frequency | ~670–610 THz | ||||||||
Colour coordinates | |||||||||
Hex triplet | #0000FF | ||||||||
sRGBB (r, g, b) | (0, 0, 255) | ||||||||
HSV (h, s, v) | (240°, 100%, 100%) | ||||||||
Source | HTML/CSS | ||||||||
B: Normalized to [0–255] (byte) |
Blue is the colour between violet and green on the optical spectrum of visible light. Human eyes perceive blue when observing light with a wavelength between 450 and 495 nanometres, which is between 4500 and 4950 ångströms. Blues with a higher frequency and thus a shorter wavelength gradually look more violet, while those with a lower frequency and a longer wavelength gradually appear more green. Pure blue, in the middle, has a wavelength of 470 nanometers (4700 ångströms). In painting and traditional colour theory, blue is one of the three primary colours of pigments, along with red and yellow, which can be mixed to form a wide gamut of colours. Red and blue mixed together form violet, blue and yellow together form green. Blue is also a primary colour in the RGB colour model, used to create all the colours on the screen of a television or computer monitor.
The modern English word blue comes from Middle English bleu or blewe, from the Old French bleu, a word of Germanic origin related to Old Dutch, Old High German,Old Saxon blāo and Old Frisian blāw, blau. The clear sky and the deep sea appear blue because of an optical effect known as Rayleigh scattering. When sunlight passes through the atmosphere, the blue wavelengths are scattered more widely by the oxygen and nitrogen molecules, and more blue comes to our eyes. An optical effect called Tyndall scattering, similar to Rayleigh scattering, explains blue eyes; there is no blue pigment in blue eyes. Distant objects appear more blue because of another optical effect called atmospheric perspective.