Metamerism (color)

Have you ever looked at a rainbow and noticed that there are different colors like red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet? These colors are not all the same, even though they all look like they belong in the rainbow. This is because they are made up of different wavelengths of light.

Now, let's say you have a piece of paper that you want to color yellow. You take out a yellow crayon and start coloring. But what happens when you take that same piece of paper outside on a sunny day? The yellow that you colored on the paper might look different depending on the light. This is what we call metamerism - the way colors can look different depending on the light they are viewed in.

Think of it like this: you have a set of colored blocks, and you can put them together to make different pictures. But if you change the light in the room, the way those pictures look can change even though the blocks are the same. That's kind of what happens with color in real life.

Metamerism can happen with all colors, not just yellow. If you've ever looked at clothes in a store under different lights and noticed that they look different, that's metamerism. The colors of the clothes might look great under the store lights, but when you take them outside in the sunlight, they might look completely different.

So, next time you notice that colors look different under different light, remember that this is called metamerism. And even though the colors might look different, they are still made up of the same wavelengths of light.