this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] vale 10 points 6 days ago (1 children)

wait until you hear about vegetables

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago

Just happened last week.

Me: "I don't even want to get started about vegetables. We'll go into it for hours."

Them: "Wait what?"

(Proceeds to go into a long conversation for hours)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

TIL, wow. I mean, to be fair, "berry" is in the damn name, so I never questioned it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago

These are lies! This is pumpkin propaganda, spread by the spirit of Halloween.

[–] [email protected] 159 points 1 week ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I appreciate the skittles reference

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Is it a skittles reference or is it a reference to purple not being an actual color and thus not a part of the rainbow?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

and thus not a part of the rainbow?

Colour need not be on the rainbow. Colour is the human experience of colour which includes purple

Our minds don't care whether a color is pure or whether it is a mix. We see those colors.

Like the berries there are technical definitions of colour that don't mesh with the common definition

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 week ago (2 children)

the heck do you mean purple is not an actual colour??

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 days ago

Don't let them pee on your Cheerios. Purple is a color, just like magenta, pink, cyan, brown, and all the other "not in the rainbow/ROYGBIV" colors.

Gatekeeping colors, I tell ya. Don't let 'em get you burnt sienna with rage.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (8 children)

Purple, the color directly between red and blue, is a creation of your mind interpreting a band of light that triggers your red and blue sensing nerves, but no green is sensed. The actual band of light we can see goes from red to green to blue. Purple doesn't fall between those colors, meaning it wouldn't be included in a rainbow, and isn't any "pure" light you could see, since it doesn't fall on the spectrum.

Essentially, any time you see purple, you're seeing two different frequencies of light that your mind interprets as a single frequency.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Would this not disqualify any mixed color? We only have receptors for three colors, and if we're arguing that purple isn't a color because it's actually two mixed together, that should also mean colors like orange, yellow, cyan, magenta, atc are also not colors by that definition right?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

Like binaural beats for the eyes?

[–] pancakes 5 points 6 days ago

This is 100% incorrect. Not in terms of science, but in terms of a qualifier of what a colour is. Just because a colour doesn't exist on the rainbow spectrum, doesn't mean it's not an "actual colour".

What you're referring to is the definition of colour specifically by physics. There are other professional fields and areas of science that use different qualifiers for colour. I work with color everyday and I can with certainty say that purple, pink, rust, teal, and sky blue are all colours.

Kind of like how different fields have different definitions of entropy or different cultures have different names for snow. It's all dependent on the framework you use and ignoring every other framework is wrong.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 week ago (4 children)

What is violet at the end of the visible spectrum, then? We call the higher wavelength stuff ultraviolet, and violet looks purple to me, so I'm having trouble reconciling this stuff with what you're saying.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Violet is dark spectral blue, added as a separate color by people who wanted 7 not six colors in the spectrum

[–] [email protected] 1 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

You're thinking of indigo.

Red

Orange

Yellow

Green

Blue

Violet

That's 6.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 22 hours ago

Perhaps it was the number I misremembered. There definitely is no violet in the spectrum

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

ah a similar explanation to why yellow is not an actual colour either

the silly explanation that has no effect on how we perceive, use, or think about colour. sigh why are the people responsible for those studies calling those colours not real? Why not just colours resulting from mixing other colours like the artists have done since the invention of paint?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Sorry for the confusion. Yellow is a single wavelength of light. We perceive it with the green and red receptors in our eyes, but it is a single wavelength. Purple isn't a single wavelength, but two that are being interpreted as a color.

That was the distinction I was calling out.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago

and that is why i didn't say the same explanation, but similar

both, in my opinion, suffer from the clickbait disease "YOU CAN'T SEE YELLOW 😱" (directly, because to see it you use two light receptors combined) "PURPLE DOESN'T EXIST 😱" (as a single wavelength colour because as opposed to the other colours of the rainbow it uses a combination of red and blue wavelengths)

i don't blame you for either of course, i'm just expressing my general annoyance with the phrasing of both science facts

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[–] [email protected] 78 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (4 children)

This feels like a case where botanical science should just have picked a different name. If you invalidate everything people think of as a berry and then tell them a dozen things that are clearly not berries are, in fact, berries, you're just making the word berry meaningless.

Berry means a tiny, usually sweet, fruit-like growth from a plant. The kind that is usually picked in bunches. The kind that you use to make smoothies. That's a berry.

Botany did us all a disservice by choosing the word "berry" to mean "a specific thing which invalidates everything you think is a berry." Just call that plant structure something in Latin, ffs.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago

Knowledge is knowing the common definition of fruit doesn't include tomato.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Well, cooking terms and botany terms are not the same. Any non reproductive part of a plant is vegetable. But in cooking we have a completely different idea of what vegetables are.

This really doesn't matter because most people are not botanists and those who are probably know the terms. The only people that care are quirky internet people with debates about weather or not potato salad should be considered a cake or something.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago

"Weather" is a nice ultimate touch

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[–] [email protected] 76 points 1 week ago (2 children)

That's because the scientific definition of berries has little in common with the colloquial one. That doesn't make either wrong, they are just used in different contexts

[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 week ago (4 children)

We really should rename botanical berries to something else.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 week ago

Botanical vs culinary.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Sometimes you feel like a peanut is not a nut!

Sometimes you don't!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

I've willfully disregarded botanical terminology every since I learned it.

Bad practice, picking generic terms to define differently.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 week ago (2 children)

A berry is a watery, often sweet fruit under 4cm

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago

They said often sweet, not...

I can't think of something disgusting to properly describe how much I hate cherry tomatoes.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 week ago (4 children)

That is the colloquial definition. The scientific definition of a berry differs a bit.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

Ah! A person of rare and refined taste!

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago

Scary-berry

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