How come the flashlight with the higher color temperature …

[JCD]

Given two flashlights, how come the one with the higher color temperature is said to produce cooler light? Lights become "warmer" as their color temperature decreases. Why?

 

[AnAppleSnail]

Because high color temperature lights are blue, and low temperature lights are red/yellow. Extremely hot objects radiate more blue than red light, we just named our warm and cool colors way long time ago. After all, fire isn't really very hot, but we called "red/yellow" warm. Now we're stuck with it.

 

[kingofwylietx]

I assume that you are looking at incandescents. Incandescents have very little blue, so to improve CRI, they use cooler color temps. LED's are almost the opposite......you usually need to go warmer to get a good CRI.

See link that helps explain this:
http://74.6.146.127/search/cache?ei=UTF-8&p=cri+vs+color+temp&icp=1&w=cri+vs+versus+color+colour+temp+temperature+temperature+temperatures&u=www.gelighting.com%2Fna%2Fbusiness_lighting%2Feducation_resources%2Fliterature_library%2Fwhite_papers%2Fdownload%2Fcolor_rendering_index.pdf&d=KIlGo-8_UlcP&_intl=us&sig=FqEvCNHHO_v4g9yrVt0wKg--&type=page

 

[mudman cj]

Color temperature is defined based upon the light emitted by an ideal black body. For example, red stars have cooler surface temperatures than yellow stars, which in turn are cooler than blue stars.

I understand that it seems confusing at first because we tend to refer to colors at the blue end of the spectrum as cool and colors at the red end as warm. Whereas this is more of a perceptual or psychological effect, the color temperature is based upon measurable temperatures and their corresponding colors of emitted light.

 

[JCD]

I understand that it seems confusing at first because we tend to refer to colors at the blue end of the spectrum as cool and colors at the red end as warm.

It's not so much confusing as just plain bass ackwards. One would think that our colloquial vocabulary could evolve as our understanding of the world around us grows.

 

[asdalton]

It's not so much confusing as just plain bass ackwards. One would think that our colloquial vocabulary could evolve as our understanding of the world around us grows.

In everyday life, blue tends to become associated with things like water and ice. I don't see any way around this.

Besides, color temperature itself is not a literal temperature unless you are dealing with incandescent blackbody emitters.

 

[AnAppleSnail]

It's not so much confusing as just plain bass ackwards. One would think that our colloquial vocabulary could evolve as our understanding of the world around us grows.

It's too ubiquitous. Water taps, cartoons, and art.

 

[Illum]

It's not so much confusing as just plain bass ackwards. One would think that our colloquial vocabulary could evolve as our understanding of the world around us grows.

I've had my arguments with english, English is full of irregularities and exceptions...I know of no other language that puts flammable and inflammable under the same definition

Blue tends to convey a colder sensation while red seems to appeal with warmth, anyone stupid enough to touch a blue flame will lose this perspective [like me, in the physical sense] in short order

 

[asdalton]

I've had my arguments with english, English is full of irregularities and exceptions...I know of no other language that puts flammable and inflammable under the same definition

Blame Latin for having the same prefix (in-) for both "in" and "not." The native English prefixes keep them separate by using un- for the latter.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=un&searchmode=none

 

[Foxfyre]

I never thought art class would ever come in handy but here we go (please bear with me, I'll try to be succinct) We'll blame any inaccuracies on my textbooks and horrible note-taking skills.

Warm, cold, dry and moist were terms for physical and animal qualities that were used from the middle ages to around the 18th century.

Warm equaled animated, exertion, glowing with artent feelings or skin bright with fever.

Cold equaled a dark spirit, lacking in enthusiasm life and energy.

The earliest (or so my professor said) artistic use of the term warm was the 1890 Oxford English Dictionary that quoted a descriptive passage (that I've long forgotten) about a warm painting.

In 1813 Charles Hayter, (ironic last name that accurately described my feelings for my history professor) in his book 'Introduction to Perspective', diagrammed the first recorded color wheel.

The colors yellow, orange and red were under warm, and green, blue and purple were under cold. Later color wheels used warm and cool (instead of cold).

I guess we just continue to call them that out of habit (and changing all those books would cost a fortune).

Hope this helped, and I agree; the English language is awkward and way too complicated.

 

[JCD]

I know of no other language that puts flammable and inflammable under the same definition

I know of no other language that contains both the words flammable and inflammable.

 

[Canuke]

I know of no other language that contains both the words flammable and inflammable.

I do know that I've seen the word "ininflammable" somewhere, but in French.