Q 01/05

Which scientist arranged the colors of the spectrum into a circle in his 1704 book Opticks?

A) Isaac Newton

B) Galileo Galilei

C) Robert Hooke

D) Christiaan Huygens

Answer · why

A) Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton closed the circle by joining the two ends of the spectrum, then sized its slices to match the intervals of a musical scale.

Q 02/05

Which term names pairs such as red and green that sit opposite on the color wheel and mix to gray?

A) Supplementary

B) Tetradic

C) Complementary

D) Achromatic

Answer · why

C) Complementary

Complementary pairs cancel to a neutral when mixed, yet make each other look brighter when placed side by side, a contrast Monet and Renoir used on pu...

Q 03/05

Which color takes its name from an 1859 battle fought in northern Italy?

A) Sienna

B) Magenta

C) Vermilion

D) Turquoise

Answer · why

B) Magenta

Magenta was a new aniline dye renamed in 1860 to honor the French and Sardinian victory over Austria at the Lombard town of Magenta a year earlier.

Q 04/05

Which painter built A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte from tiny dots of color?

A) Claude Monet

B) Paul Signac

C) Pierre-Auguste Renoir

D) Georges Seurat

Answer · why

D) Georges Seurat

Georges Seurat left the blending to the viewer's eye, a method that art critics of the 1880s named Pointillism in order to mock it.

Q 05/05

Which film process, used for The Wizard of Oz, recorded color on three black-and-white negatives?

A) Kodachrome

B) Technicolor

C) CinemaScope

D) Eastmancolor

Answer · why

B) Technicolor

Technicolor cameras split the incoming light three ways and filmed each part through its own color filter. Dyes put the color back when the three reco...