Explanation of the Colour Change in Alexandrites

Alexandrites are remarkable and rare gemstones. They display an extraordinary colour change according to the ambient lighting, from emerald green in daylight to ruby red in incandescent light from tungsten lamps or candles. While this colour change has been correctly attributed to chromium impuritie...

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Autores principales: Xie, Fei, Cao, Yu, Ranchon, Cindy, Hart, Alan, Hansen, Robin, Post, Jeffrey E., Whitney, Coralyn W., Dawson-Tarr, Emma, Drew, Alan J., Dunstan, David J.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2020
Materias:
Article
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7145866/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32273534
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-62707-3
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author Xie, Fei
Cao, Yu
Ranchon, Cindy
Hart, Alan
Hansen, Robin
Post, Jeffrey E.
Whitney, Coralyn W.
Dawson-Tarr, Emma
Drew, Alan J.
Dunstan, David J.
author_facet Xie, Fei
Cao, Yu
Ranchon, Cindy
Hart, Alan
Hansen, Robin
Post, Jeffrey E.
Whitney, Coralyn W.
Dawson-Tarr, Emma
Drew, Alan J.
Dunstan, David J.
author_sort Xie, Fei
collection PubMed
description Alexandrites are remarkable and rare gemstones. They display an extraordinary colour change according to the ambient lighting, from emerald green in daylight to ruby red in incandescent light from tungsten lamps or candles. While this colour change has been correctly attributed to chromium impurities and their absorption band in the yellow region of the visible light spectrum, no adequate explanation of the mechanism has been given. Here, the alexandrite effect is fully explained by considering the von Kries model of the human colour constancy mechanism. This implies that our colour constancy mechanism is real (objective) and primarily attuned to correct for the colour temperature of black-body illuminants.
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spelling pubmed-71458662020-04-15 Explanation of the Colour Change in Alexandrites Xie, Fei Cao, Yu Ranchon, Cindy Hart, Alan Hansen, Robin Post, Jeffrey E. Whitney, Coralyn W. Dawson-Tarr, Emma Drew, Alan J. Dunstan, David J. Sci Rep Article Alexandrites are remarkable and rare gemstones. They display an extraordinary colour change according to the ambient lighting, from emerald green in daylight to ruby red in incandescent light from tungsten lamps or candles. While this colour change has been correctly attributed to chromium impurities and their absorption band in the yellow region of the visible light spectrum, no adequate explanation of the mechanism has been given. Here, the alexandrite effect is fully explained by considering the von Kries model of the human colour constancy mechanism. This implies that our colour constancy mechanism is real (objective) and primarily attuned to correct for the colour temperature of black-body illuminants. Nature Publishing Group UK 2020-04-09 /pmc/articles/PMC7145866/ /pubmed/32273534 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-62707-3 Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Xie, Fei
Cao, Yu
Ranchon, Cindy
Hart, Alan
Hansen, Robin
Post, Jeffrey E.
Whitney, Coralyn W.
Dawson-Tarr, Emma
Drew, Alan J.
Dunstan, David J.
Explanation of the Colour Change in Alexandrites
title Explanation of the Colour Change in Alexandrites
title_full Explanation of the Colour Change in Alexandrites
title_fullStr Explanation of the Colour Change in Alexandrites
title_full_unstemmed Explanation of the Colour Change in Alexandrites
title_short Explanation of the Colour Change in Alexandrites
title_sort explanation of the colour change in alexandrites
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7145866/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32273534
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-62707-3
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