Why do we get purple and not green when we mix red and blue?

Question

Physics

I never thought about it, but now an interesting idea came to mind. After all, with other mixtures of radiation of different wavelengths, we get an "averaging" of this very length from the point of view of our perception. But only when mixing the longest waves with practically the shortest ones (from the visible part of the spectrum), we get even shorter ones. Why is that?

Answer 1

https://habr.com/post/60362/

Answer 2

we get the "averaging" of this very length from the point of view of our perception

Nifiga. Electromagnetic waves are in superposition with respect to each other. It's just that eye receptors respond to different wavelengths. And the brain unites the signals from them. And pink doesn't exist at all :)

Answer 3

Why do we get purple and not green when we mix red and blue?

Because it's not. When mixing R + B, we get not purple at all , but a color that is not in the spectrum: magenta, Magenta .
So the result is a mixture of waves, not the shortest ones.