I get a lot of questions (and smirking ones, at that) about why we have a red light in our bathroom.
Well, I'll tell you:
Night vision.
It's a trick that I learned on a stargazing walk with my family in Toulome Meadows (Yosemite). The guide had a flash light with red Saran wrap over the edge. I heard others ask why and she told us: Night Vision.
You see, red light has a long frequency, low amplitude in the color spectrum. In other words, it's a slow moving photon (spec of light). It's why it's on the longest side of a rainbow. For this same reason, it reacts the least with rhodopsin (the light-sensing molecule in your eye's retina). Rhodospin is also known as Visual Purple. Rhodospin is made from Vitamin A (see the connections?)
Soooo...red light causes the least change in your eye once you're in "night vision" mode.
It does make you wonder, then, why aren't there more night lights that are red instead of green or blue (which are the most reactive colors with rhodospin). It seems that these safety lights aren't doing you any favors- once you look into their lit area, you can't see anything else very well.
hmm
Manufacturers- any reason why??? Seems like another crummy design pushed onto consumers.
Why on earth do car manufacturers put in those halogen head lights then? The intensity just burns my eyes at night.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, we've all been trained that red lights are taillights. But that doesn't mean that headlights need to be in the green/blue spectrum- they really could get yellow-spectrum headlights and we'd all be fine.
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