The Liquid Light Riddle—Does it Make Black or White?

In this video I take color mixing to the next level. What happens when you mix red, green and blue paint together? What about if it is glowing? Do you get the same color? Watch this video to learn about the different aspects of color mixing.

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DISCLAIMER: Any experiment you try is at your own risk

[radicalxedward]

I would think anything that produces its own light would generally be additive and anything that reflects light would be subtractive.

[prasantamukherjee]

2:51 according to my video game experience, a new stage is going to unlock lol

[edwardnedharvey]

Great video! One comment about subtractive color: don't use red, green, blue. Use cyan, magenta, yellow. Cyan is the absence of red. Magenta is the absence of green. Yellow is the absence of blue. You can't use RGB paint/due/pigment to produce any color you want; but you can with CMY.

[fukpoeslaw]

Zebra colour.

Edit:
Well, at least I was half right.

[ayashuu]

We’re gonna need you when we’re storming Area 51.

[xNecromancerxxx]

Yay! Another ActionLab video! I SO look forward to these, love this guy!!!

[seastilton]

Yep that was a lovely video already watched it all.

[DivyNisar]

Thank you so much @ActionLab I knew this thing for a while but never knew the real reason.
Thank you so much.

[tom_something]

The way the glow stick works is pretty interesting. The chemical reaction that makes the actual light, for all colors of glow sticks, only produces ultraviolet light, which we can't see. Another substance is added to the mixture that absorbs the UV light and emits light of a different color. But there's demand for all sorts of colors, and it's not always cheap, easy, or possible to obtain substances that will glow that color from UV. So for those "hard to reach" colors, I substance with approximately the correct color is chosen, and then as demonstrated in this video, sometimes a pigment is added to subtractively produce the desired color.

This is part of the reason why some glow sticks, before they're activated, will already appear to be a certain color while other glow sticks' colors may be difficult to determine until they are activated. The ones that needed the pigment give you a "hint".

Fluorescent bulbs work the same way. The metal vapor in the tube produces UV light when current runs through it, and the glass is coated (on the inside) with a substance that absorbs the UV light and emits visible light. So it's actually "simpler" to make a black light than a visible fluorescent light, because there's one less step.

There are also "white" and "warm white" LEDs that produce light in a similar way. For the most part, an LED's light output peaks strongly at a specific color (though researchers are working on that). As this channel has mentioned more than once, "white" isn't really a color you can point to on the spectrum. So to get white light, you can use multiple LEDs close to each other, each with a different color, or you can use an ultraviolet LED and "paint" over it with a fluorescent substance that produces a mixture of light to produce white.

[satyamverma]

Rumour has it that the Action lab stopped replying once he gained 2 million subs

[ianalexanderreyes]

Digital artists actually paint with additive colors while using RGB sliders to swap from colors, for example red+green=yellow, it's different to the oil/acrylic color mixing techniques, it's also a cool way to think about colors!

[bhagyashreechaudhari]

I'm only 11 but i watch your videos and i guessed the question right.
This is how many people like The Action Lab.(BTW love ur videos dude)

⇓

[honkhonk]

It makes a lava color if I remember from tkor vids correctly

[mattjw]

I hate when people confuse additive and subtractive color mixing. This video sums up their differences pretty well. Good job!

[gk...]

_"What is this for?"_
_"It's blue light."_
_"What does it do?"_
_"It turns blue."_ ;)

[yunusk]

I was trying to learn about RGB as a graphic designer, and seeing it in such a way is really cool, I want to hug you 😁

[qingyangzhang]

I think white light because I assumed glow-sticks to produce light by passing electricity through a particular chemical, and when you mix chemicals together, it's additive

[sourabhperuri]

How do you even get these ideas? I was shocked by the idea itself. Very innovative. Keep making videos like these

[radicalxedward]

If the glow sticks aren’t mixed much I would think they’d produce white light, but since it’s a chemical reaction, there’s too many variables if they’re really mixed together. They could produce no light for all we know.

Edit: I would basically call this right. It did produce white light AND there was an extra unknown variable of the red dye.

[green]

oh you should explain this is not quite correct, or on the other hand you should explain the system a bit more. Adaptive and Subtractive is totally right, but its in red/green/blue in one case and Cyan/Yellow/Magenta in the other case. these are the primary colors depending on the System, meas you can't create them with mixin two other together. On a Circle of Color the Color sit in between each other. So you use green Colour(dye) green contains actually Blue(cyan) and Yellow. Please try to explain this in some new episode. Thanks for you Videos.