📡 Electromagnetic Spectrum Explorer

About the Electromagnetic Spectrum Explorer

Visible light is a tiny window in a vast spectrum. The same physics that gives us color also gives us radio waves, microwaves, infrared heat, ultraviolet, X-rays and gamma rays — all the same kind of radiation, differing only in wavelength. This explorer lets you slide across that spectrum and see exactly where the colors we can perceive begin and end.

Where color lives

Human vision responds only between roughly 380 and 750 nanometres. Below 380nm lies ultraviolet, then X-rays and gamma rays; above 750nm lies infrared, then microwaves and radio. Within the visible window the tool computes the true perceived color of each wavelength using a CIE-based conversion, from deep violet at 400nm through green at 550nm to red at 700nm, and matches it to an exact named PIGMENTUM color.

Outside the visible band

Move the slider into the invisible regions and the tool names the band — infrared, ultraviolet and so on — and explains that there is no color to show, because the eye has no receptors for that radiation. It is a clear, hands-on way to understand why we see what we see.

Who it is for

Physics teachers and students, science communicators, and the simply curious.