rendering-visible-spectrum

Rendering the Visible Spectrum, Brandon Li

You might wonder why we should go through all the trouble of making an extremely accurate picture when there are already a bunch of others that seem good enough. You might bring up the fact that we very often make use of “inaccurate” or oversimplified depictions of phenomena in science communication and education. And often, teaching a simplified version of a concept is the best way to introduce it to a student, in and this case you have to make sure the student is aware that what they’re learning is a simplified version of the real thing that is stripped of all the complexities and nuance. This is okay because here accuracy is being scarified for ease of learning, but what about when making something as accurate as possible has no downsides? Such is the case with pictures of the visible spectrum. Here there is an issue with choosing a random picture to represent it. It may give the students the wrong idea of what the spectrum “should” look like.