No yellow pixel in tvs?

Question

How come when you have a tv the pixels are red, green, and blue when you're suppost to use the primary colors to make every other color, and people say that red, green and blue are primary colors when green is made with yellow and blue. This makes no sence because when you make other colors like in a tv you need to use the primary colors and green is not a primary color.

Answer 1

Ahh, but green is a primary color for light!  

For an "additive" system such as light. the primaries are Red, Green, and Blue.  White light (as defined around a TV station anyway) is 59% G, 30% R and 11% B.  So, white light contains all the colors.  You can see this by splitting white light with a prism.

In first grade art, we were taught about a "subtractive" system (paint).  The color primaries for a subtractive system are Magenta, Cyan and Yellow (the complements of Red, Green and Blue).  That's why the color inks in a color printer are Magenta, Cyan and Yellow.  Paints and pigments actually absorb a color and reflect the rest of the light back to our eye.  

Therefore, if white light is shining on a shirt, then red, green and blue light are also shining on the shirt. If the shirt absorbs blue light, then only red and green light will be reflected from the shirt back to your eye. Red and green light striking your eye always give the appearance of yellow; for this reason, the shirt will appear yellow.

The central issue of your question is if what you are looking at *produces* light or *absorbs* light.  TVs and computer monitors produce light.  Therefore they use the addative method.

I hope this helps.  Please return and select a Best Answer from all of those submitted.