评论
打印
The rainbow, as we know it, is Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Violet. ROYGBV。
彩虹，就如我们所知道，是红橙黄绿蓝紫。
I'm ignoring Indigo because, let's be honest. Indigo? But where exactly is violet? Is it at the end here? This dark blue? And what's this brighter light blue-green?
我准备忽略靛蓝，老实说，靛蓝？呵。那么紫色哪去了呢？是在这深蓝色最末端吗？这个浅蓝绿色是什么？
Cyan, perhaps? Why don't we say the rainbow is Red Orange Yellow Green Cyan Blue? ROYGCB
青色嘛？我们为什么不直接说彩虹是红、橙、黄、绿、青、蓝？ROYGCB？
Well, we actually do, and we've just forgotten.
我们确实是这样说的，但是我们只是已经忘记了。
When Isaac Newton originally observed a rainbow of light split by a prism and made his labeling of the colors as RedOrangeYellowGreenBlueIndigoViolet,
当艾萨克·牛顿最初通过棱镜观察光分裂出来的彩虹，并提出了自己的颜色标记红、橙、黄、绿、蓝、靛、紫，
the thing he called "blue" was indeed what we would now call blue-green, teal or cyan – reminiscent of the color of the blue sky.
被他称为‘蓝’的物质其实是我们现在所说的蓝绿色，即青色——让人想起蓝天颜色。
And what we now tend to call blue, Newton called violet - as in, roses are red, violets are blue. Dark blue.
我们现在倾向于称之为蓝的（牛顿称为紫）—就是红玫瑰、紫罗兰，也就是深蓝色。
He only included indigo in his fundamental 'seven colors of the rainbow',
他在“七色彩虹”基础色中引入靛色
so that they would match the number of notes of the western musical scale: Do re mi fa so la ti… yeah.
只是为了和西方的音乐音阶数量相配：Do re mi fa so la ti......
Purple and magenta, as we know, don't occur in the rainbow from a prism because they can only be made as a combination of red and blue light,
我们知道，紫色和品红色并不存在于棱镜折射出的彩虹中，因为它们只能通过红光和蓝光的叠加而成，
and those are on opposite sides of the rainbow – nowhere near overlapping.
而这两者在彩虹的两端，完全没有重叠的地方。
So there's no purple or hot pink in the rainbow from a prism.
所以棱镜折射出的彩虹是没有紫色或粉红色的。
Violet is there in the "roses are red, violets are blue" sense, but purple is not.
在“玫瑰是红色的，紫罗兰是蓝色的”这种感觉中，紫色是存在的，但没有紫色。
So then why do rainbows in the sky often look like they have purple in them?
那么为什么天空中的彩虹看上去有紫色呢？
I suspect sometimes it's an optical illusion whereby nice deep blues in small amounts surrounded by a lighter color appear purplish to our eyes.
我认为这是一种错觉，在我们的眼睛里，小面积的深蓝被一种较浅的颜色包围着，看起来是略带紫色的。
However, sometimes purple and pink really are there - because a rainbow is really a rain-disk:
但有时紫色和粉红色确实存在——因为彩虹实际上是一个雨盘：
each color of sunlight reflects back in a bright-rimmed disc, all of different sizes, which together add up to make a white disk with a colorful rim.
阳光的每一种颜色都反射到一个明亮边缘的圆盘上，所有不同大小的圆盘加在一起就形成了一个有彩色边缘的白色圆盘。
But because light is a wave, interference from the raindrops themselves actually gives each disk multiple rings - the familiar outer ring is just the brightest.
但是因为光是一种波，雨滴本身的干涉实际上给每个圆盘带来了多个环——我们熟悉的外环是最亮的。
The others are called 'supernumerary rings' and are the source of supernumerary rainbows - the smaller the raindrops, the stronger the supernumerary bows.
其他的被称为“多余的环”，它们是多余彩虹的来源——雨滴越小，多余的彩虹就越强。
And if the drops are the right size, the first red supernumerary ring can overlap significantly with the main dark blue ring, and what do red and blue give?
如果雨滴大小合适，第一个红色多余环可以与主环的深蓝色环重叠，那么红色和蓝色代表什么呢？
Purple! So as the saying goes, roses are red, violets are blue, and purple in a rainbow is a supernumerary hue.
紫色！所以俗话说，玫瑰是红色的，紫罗兰是蓝色的，而彩虹中的紫色是多余的色调。
