Lionel Mandrake
Lionel Mandrake's JournalThe DMV is almost as bad as hospital ERs.
Waits of several hours are common in both of these broken systems. The ERs are a national disgrace, but the California DMV is our very own particular disgrace. A good question for any politician running for statewide office in California is: WTF are YOU going to do about the fucked up DMV? If the answer is to study it, then you should vote for someone else. 
Limits of the visible spectrum
What determines the limiting wavelengths of visible light? Below about 400 nm., light is usually called ultraviolet (UV). Above about 700 nm., it's called infrared (IR). But why?
The link below shows a chromaticity diagram, the boundary of which has a curved part (corresponding to spectrally pure visible light) and a straight part (the purple line, corresponding to mixtures of red and violet).
In a normal adult human, the lens filters out most of the UV. Babies can see 300-400 nm. light, which is well into the UV. But they don't see new colors in this range. Spectrally pure UV produces the same sensation as visible light within the chromaticity diagram, i.e., not spectrally pure and not on the purple line.
The cutoff at the upper wavelength limit is more gradual. Retinal photoreceptors become less and less efficient at converting light into nerve excitations as the wavelength moves toward IR. Again, although we can sometimes see IR, we don't see new colors in this range.
https://scc.ustc.edu.cn/zlsc/sugon/intel/ipp/ipp_manual/IPPI/ippi_ch6/ch6_cie_diagram.htm
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Gender: MaleHometown: The Left Coast
Home country: USA
Current location: electrical wires
Member since: Sun Jul 1, 2007, 06:47 PM
Number of posts: 4,076
