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It is said that human eye can see light with wavelength approximately between 400nm and 700nm.

Are these upper and lower bounds same for every human? If not, what are the means and standard deviations of these upper and lower wavelength values for human eyes?

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just the fact that people can be color blind should answer that for you. I think this question is more appropriate to a biology site, because color percetion depends on the biological receptors of the eye not in one to one correspondence with wavelength. – anna v Feb 19 at 8:17

migrated from physics.stackexchange.com Feb 19 at 9:02

2 Answers

up vote 4 down vote accepted

Basically every human sees the same spectrum as we all have the same four types of photoreceptors: rods and a cone for green, red, and one for blue light.

In very rare cases there are women who have a fourth type of cone (see it mentioned here at Wikipedia), so they see a different spectrum.

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This is not entirely correct, there are multiple variants of each of the three colour photoreceptors that have slightly different response curves. I do not know whether these variants result in different minimum and maximum sensitivities. – Jack Aidley Feb 19 at 11:45
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Also, you've somewhat confused the women having a fourth type of cone too. What happens in some women is that they have two variants of the same colour photoreceptor (red, almost aways). – Jack Aidley Feb 19 at 11:47
I've also read studies on intraocular lenses that suggested that the humans eye sensitivity to light changes with age. – Alex Stone Feb 20 at 3:51

Human eyes all use the same optical pigment photopsin, so they all have the same basic frequency response.

There are differences. For example cataracts will change the sensitivity of the eye to colour, and people with colour blindness have various defect to cone cells that affect colour response. However these are secondary effects.

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