Sometimes we all need a mindless distraction. However, downloading this app onto my phone made me think. In fact it sent me down a rabbit hole of colour definition and what is “hue”.

The app’s premise is very simple. You start off with some coloured squares which are arranged in terms of gradient of colour and hue, you press start, it jumbles them up and you must restore harmony.

We know that perception of colour changes with the context and this app relies on that to make it more difficult as you move the squares around and they appear to change, depending on where they land up.

Kate Smith defines hue; hue is commonly a synonym for the words colour, tone, shade, and tint. More specifically, in terms of physics, a hue is the dominant wavelength of light that a person can see – yellow, red, blue, green, etc.

In her book Outside Color, University of Pittsburgh professor M. Chirimuuta writes “Of all the properties that objects appear to have, color hovers uneasily between the subjective world of sensation and the objective world of fact.”

Whatever the theory it’s very satisfying to swop those last 2 squares and suddenly it just looks right. Visual tranquillity is achieved.

Michele Summers