User blog comment:Ty Rezac/Best states to live/@comment-2159942-20130518225240/@comment-32656-20130523063445

Then you were taught incorrectly. Not shocking with the schools in the US, so that one is not on you.

Nothing is a mix, in fact - the spectrum of light makes that very clear. Every single color or shade, aside from black and white, lies somewhere on it, wholly separate. The colors you can see on a computer, for instance, when there is a choice - like in a graphics program, other than paint - with all of the colors on it is not that far off this. Only the colors with elements of black or white on not on the spectrum.

Blue, Yellow, and Red are known as the "primary colors" because they have the ability, when mixed in the right quantities, to become any other color but white. All other colors have this ability to some degree, with some combinations also being able to make white. Do not, however, take this as meaning that these three are any better than the others - it is merely a quirk that they do this. All colors have quirks, remember.

Blue, Red, and Green are nothing of the sort for light. They are the colors used in generated light in varying degrees, but that has nothing to do with the light itself. Rather, these are the three colors used as a base concept in one particular color model, and are referred to as the "additive primaries." They hold no net purpose in light like that. This system, which can produce white (in the say way the other primary system you mention can produce black) is in part based on Trichromacy.

Trichromacy is when the colors a creature can see are based on three colors - in primates/humans, this is green, blue, and yellow-green. Other animals with this ability have different versions - for instance, honeybees see ultraviolet, blue and green, but not red. Most see only two, however, though there is a few with four. These colors are what the "cones" in our eyes see and interpret based on, nothing more.

So, as I said - Cyan is a color in its own right. It possesses its own spot on the light spectrum, and is not a tint or shade (adding black or white to a color) of another color.

The only "mixes" are colors with black or white added. The ability to mix the other colors around and get another color out of the deal is wholly irrelevant, and is more a trick of the eye than anything.