9 Science Videos That Will Make You Question Everything

4. Magenta Doesn’t Exist - Whentheappledrops

Although there is a reasonable chance that your favourite colour is purple, in the real world, it doesn't actually exist.

If you're going to be picky, no colours truly "exist", they're just the result of the brain's interpretation of different wavelengths of light, but purple (or magenta) exists even less than this, because it doesn't even have a wavelength.

You probably know that the rainbow of colours we see are actually just different mixtures of red, green and blue, but using this system, there is actually no way to detect magenta. For example, when you mix green and blue light together, you will see cyan, which is wedged in between the two on the colour spectrum. By all rights, when you look at a mixture of red and blue light, you should really be seeing green, but as the green receptors in your eyes are not being stimulated, the brain simply makes up a colour to fill in the gap.

This rather affable chap explains exactly how it works.