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https://physics.stackexchange.com/q/259208

First of, as is discussed in the above question, light waves can be superimpositions of various sinusoidal waves....

Now i am no physicist, but as far as i know, colour of a light depends on its frequency.

Thus colour of a sinusoidal wave is pretty easily understood.

Now suppose i mix two colours of light, say red and blue.

Considering the wave nature of light i should get a complicated looking wave, which has a purple colour.

But there are normal sinusoidal purple light waves also....

So how exactly does the waveform change the sensation of light? How are the two waves different?

I am aware that the waveform of a sound wave influences what is known as the quality of sound... but i have never heard of quality of light....

(My apologies if this is a noob question)

Sage of Seven Paths
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Your preception of color has more to do with the biology of your eye then physics in this case. You have 3 recptors in your eye for color one for each red, blue, and green. These are doing a fourier transform of sorts where it breaks down any complex wave into a weighted sum of red, blue, and green simple waves. So if you shine a simple wave with value of purple (actually hard to do because no one frequency really makes purple ) or of you shine a little red and a little blue, the human eye can't tell the difference. This is how your computer screen works and produces all colors with just red green and blue pixels.

shai horowitz
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