Science Memes

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kawaiiiiiii (mander.xyz)

submitted 5 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago (3 children)

I'd argue that accurate color perception isn't necessary if one makes an assumption about the average age of the riders. Given that bright hair in humans is either blond or whitened by age (excepting albinos, which are rare), all of the riders having bright hair means that they're either blond or old. Assuming that there are few large groups of senior riders, Legolas could come to his conclusion based on brightness alone.

Unfortunately I don't know enough about optics to say whether this makes any difference.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

Someone did the math above.

https://old.lemmy.world/comment/16391357

So, a typical pupil is around 2 mm in diameter in bright conditions. With the Rayleigh limit that results in an angular resolution of 1.22 * 60010^-9 m / 210^-3 m = 3.66*10^-4 rad

At a distance of 5 x 3 mi = 15 mi = 24.1 km this corresponds to a point to point distance of

tan(a/2) = (d/2)/l

d = tan(a/2) * l * 2 = tan(3.66*10^-4) * 24100 * 2 = 8.8 m

So in conclusion, with regular, human-like eyes he could discern points that are at least 8.8 m apart in the best case scenario. Discerning hair color from the color of the clothes would need a much higher resolution, and the horsemen are probably not 10 m apart from each other either. And again, this is a theoretical limit, real-world resolution would probably be significantly lower.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago

Legolas can also tell that they carry spears and their leader is taller than average. Spectral information is unlikely to tell him that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago

Unfortunately neither do I! It has been a long time since I studied physics, and I never did optics