In Living Color
C olor will catch most everyone's eye from time to time. It can't be helped as our eyes are designed to perceive the spectral wonders of the natural world. It is one of those phenomenon that is so common most of us hardly give it any thought -- -- unless, of course, you are an artist, gardener or chromatographer. The sun emits an amazing range of energy in the form of particles or waves (wave/particle duality will have to wait for an upcoming blog). The colors we see in nature are a tiny part of that energy called visible light; science refers to the whole affair as the em (electromagnetic) spectrum. One em wave can span galaxies or be so short that a million times a million waves could fit in a spoon. To us humans, color is a ridiculously tiny part of that range with wavelengths from 390 (violet) to 700 millionth of a meter (red). That range just so happens to be the frequencies of light most emitted from our sun. (Can you guess...