Eye See Colors

So, we have colors from light, and colors from pigments, but how do we see color? Well, with our eyes, obviously, but what is it about our eyes that makes us able to tell yellow from green, fuchsia from teal?

You can think of your eye as a ball; the lens is in the hole that you see through. The back part of the eyeball is called the retina. The retina contains a lot of cells. Two kinds that are important in color vision are the rods and cones. Your retina contains about 120 million rod cells and 6 million cones! Rods don't actually see color, but they help you know how light or dark something is, and if it is moving. There are three types of cones - those that sense red, blue, and green light.

Some people have problems with their cone cells, and they find it hard to tell colors apart. For example, red and green might look very much alike to them. This is called color blindness. Do you know anyone who is color-blind? If you do, that person is probably a male, because males are 16 times more likely to be color-blind than females!