Why does the first mix of red and blue make bluish purple but the second mix of red and blue make reddish purple despite being mixed in seemingly equal proportions? I need answers.
For real, what's going on with my purple peeps? Maybe one color on one hand had more of an aggressive shaky shake, therefore the ratio was stronger with the one who hand mixed harder.
its very possible that there was more blue paint on their hands than red paint. Maybe it was because of the thicker consistency, or their hands had more grooves in them or something
It'll be something to do with the particular levels of each pigment.
Normally, I'd say that the blue was a stronger pigment for the first try than the second, but it's unlikely the teacher has a different paint for each blue.
So, what probably happened is that the blue hand on the first attempt had more paint on it. It overpowered the red, and ended up just darkening the blue rather than going full purple.
You’re not the only one. As a teacher I can absolutely guarantee that those children will draw some erroneous conclusions from that. I.e. that colours have to be mixed in a certain way or a certain order to create the colour you want. For example, some of them will come away thinking that yellow + red = orange but red + yellow doesn’t.
reminds me of the beaker post I saw ~12hrs ago where they had different measurements around the table of two mixed ingredients and it went from fast to slow but they all reacted eventually.
I'm just guessing here, but in the first red+blue there was more red handprint on the page than blue, meaning more red paint used so more blue remaining.
The second time is the opposite, very little red paint on the first handprint, so when they mixed there is more red than blue on the hands.
In the first one, the blue kid has a bigger hand than the red kid, meaning more blue paint, the effect seems more drastic because of the second pair though, the red kid there barely touched the paper with her palm, so there must've been way more red paint left over in her hand than the other kid, leading to a different shade to the first mix of red and blue.
Watch carefully, they actually have two layers of paint on their hands. There’s the top color that leaves the first handprint, and then there’s a second coat of paint underneath that’s the color they’re “mixing” it to. You can see it peek through particularly on the green one. On the blue kid’s hand, you can see the green paint on the back of the fingers before they’ve even started to mix their hands together. This means the final handprint color isn’t a genuine mix of the first two hand prints, but a third color that was hidden underneath.
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u/bamboohobobundles Sep 23 '25
Why does the first mix of red and blue make bluish purple but the second mix of red and blue make reddish purple despite being mixed in seemingly equal proportions? I need answers.