Today I got the chance to ask our computer graphics professor a question that I asked myself quite some time ago: what the fuck is the color pink?

Like, the color right before infrared is red, the color right before ultraviolet is violet. And every other color is some wavelength between those two colors. EXCEPT FOR PINK!?

On a hue color wheel pink is between red and violet, so it's wavelength has to be somewhere around there, right??

Well, turns out pink is the color humans perceive when red and violet are mixed (duh), meaning the red and blue cones are stimulated. Since both cones respond to wavelengths on the opposite ends of the visible spectrum, there is no monochromatic wavelength that would trigger both, hence there is no wavelength that looks pink.

That's also the reason pink does not appear in a rainbow, because there white sunlight light, a mixture of (almost, hi Astro-fedi) all monochromatic wavelengths, is refracted based on wavelength, so no mixed colors occur in it.