Linear Combination UV-Vis Colors

The mathematical concept of linear combination is important in quantum mechanics. This is a simple activity to describe a basic linear combination as it related to color.

Any color can be described as a linear combination of the three primary colors with weighting factors:

Color = a*Red + b*Yellow + c*Blue

Blue is described as a=b=0 c=1 Red is described as b=c=0 a=1 Yellow is a=c=0 b=1 Green is described as a=0 b=c=0.5 purple is described as b=0 a=c=0.5 Orange is described as c=0 a=b=0.5

Activity

- collect the UV-Vis data for the 3 primary colors

- graph these using Igor

- collect the UV-Vis spectrum of your mixture and determine the coefficients a, b, c.