Color Blindness

 COLOR BLINDNESS 

May 2,2021

Hello, my dear astronomers. I hope everything is going okay. I know today's blog is a bit late, well, that's because of the tuition people taking continuous tests. Anyways, without any further ado as our friend suggested a great topic for the post, here we are diving into a bit of biology today. 

We should consider ourselves fortunate to witness nature's vivid portraiture around us. But the same can't be said for everyone. So what actually is color blindness? Color blindness or the scientific term ACHROMATOPSIA is said to occur when people instead of seeing green and red as distinct colors, see them as very similar, or even see no colors at all, resulting in a grey vision, which ultimately results in color confusion and other frustrations. 

But the same can't be said for everyone because 7-10 percent of men and nearly 0.4 percent of women have some form of colorblindness. 

So, let's see how do we see colors in the first place. When light falls on an object, like a lemon, the object absorbs some of its light and reflects the rest of it at different wavelengths depending on the properties of the object. These light waves reflect off the lemon's surface and hit the light-sensitive layer of cells called the RETINA, located at the back of our eye.

Inside the retina, there are two types of light-detecting cells called rods and cones. 

1. Rods- Rods help us to see in the low-light conditions, and are responsible for black and white vision only. They do not detect color and come in only one type.

2. Cones- However the cones come in three types that allow us to detect colors like red, green, and blue. 

Together these cones help us to see the whole spectrum of colors.

So, when you see a color the cone sends a signal to your brain and you identify that specific color. 

Well, how can just these three types of cells tell you about all the colors you see around?

         When we mix the color red and green, we get yellow. So when we see the color yellow in that of lemon, the red and green cones get activated and each of them sends the signals to your brain, which mixes these colors, thus, allowing us to detect the yellow color. 

          Similarly, our brain can see an infinite number of colors that are a combination of only three colors, red, green, and blue.  

Now, in some cases, when one or more types of cones do not work properly, it causes color blindness, which comes in different forms.

1. Red-green color blindness known as DEUTERANOPIA, in which a person has difficulty in telling the difference between red and green. 

2. Next comes the blue-yellow color blindness called TRITANOPIA. Although the name is blue-yellow color blindness, people afflicted with this color blindness can usually tell the difference between these two colors. However, they cannot tell the difference between blue and green and also yellow and violet.

3. The third type is TOTAL COLOR BLINDNESS OR MONOCHROMACY. In this rare condition, people can only see in black and white. 

The other way in which RED-GREEN color blindness occurs is when there is a defective X-chromosome Human beings have 23 different pairs of chromosomes where one pair is the so- called sex-chromosome. Only women can be carriers for color blindness who pass it on to their sons.

I hope you liked this post. I personally feel that I have added much things which are really not necessary and not in accordance to the topic. It's fine if you skip some of the former part. Thank you friends for all your support and suggestions.😊