Dark water is a problem for people with colour vision problems.
But scientists say they’ve found an alternative: the dark.
It’s not a problem if you have the right conditions, but if you can’t see the light, you won’t know what colour you are.
For those with colour blindness, the darkness can make it hard to tell the difference between colours.
It is also difficult for people who can’t make out light, such as those with visual impairments.
“The only way to get the correct colour is to have it in the right spot, but that’s a lot of work,” says Dr Jennifer Leech from the Australian Institute of Science.
The colour theory The colour perception test has been developed to test the theory that dark water makes it hard for people to tell between different colours.
The test takes about 20 seconds and is not intended to test colourblindness.
The team from the University of Western Australia and Queensland University of Technology used a high-resolution camera to capture photos of dark water on a water surface.
They used a spectrometer to measure the wavelengths of light coming from the water surface and then measured the amount of blue light reflected back.
They also measured the water temperature and humidity, both of which are key to determining the water’s colour.
The result was very different to a colour blind person.
“You could see it from your feet and your hand, but the colour was very much out of the blue,” Dr Leech says.
It was difficult to see the colour difference The test was not very accurate, she says, because the camera could only capture a colour when the water was very dark.
The researchers also found that if the water had a temperature of 1,000 degrees Celsius (3,500 degrees Fahrenheit), then the colour changes would be more obvious, because they would be darker.
So, the colour is likely to be a mixture of blue and green.
“If the water has a temperature at a lower temperature of 500 degrees Celsius, the blue colour would be the dominant colour, and you’d see a mix of green and blue, and it would be difficult to tell,” Dr Lu said.
This is because the water would be very saturated with a blue colour.
If the water is warmer than 500 degrees, the effect is different.
The blue-green colour in water The researchers then compared the colour of the water with the colour perception of the colourblind person.
They were surprised to find that a colourblind individual could see the difference, even though they could not see the blue.
“They were able to pick up on that blue light coming out of their eyes, so they could pick up that blue colour,” Dr Ju says.
The difference in the two people’s colour perception was so big that it was difficult for the person with colour blindness to tell whether the water looked green or blue.
So they had to change their method of colour discrimination.
The scientists added a sensor that detects light, and added a camera that captured light from the light reflected off the water.
“We wanted to find out what the sensor’s ability to detect light was like,” Dr Lucy said.
So the researchers added another sensor that measures light reflected from the surface, and used that to measure light reflected through the water to see if the sensor could pick it up.
“So you have a system that’s able to detect that light reflected by the surface that you’d need to add another sensor to pick that up, which is a bit of a pain,” Dr Liu said.
The sensor is a lot smaller than the one used to detect colour, so the team had to build a new sensor.
The light sensors used in the test were a mix between optical and infrared, which were easier to detect than light from blue.
This made the colour-recognition test much more accurate.
The camera used for the experiment was a Canon 5D Mark III, which was able to capture 400 colour images per second.
The infrared sensor is able to measure infrared light, which helps detect red light.
So this is not the first time that a device has been used to test for colour vision, but this is the first test that has been able to do so using infrared light.
This experiment is a huge step forward, but it is far from perfect.
“This test was very, very expensive to do, and a lot harder to perform than the normal colour-blind colour discrimination test,” Dr Wu says.
“But it’s still a big step forward in our quest for colour blindness.”