;colony/science / Your Body
♡ Your Body
Your Body
The machine you live in — measured, simulated, and explained without a textbook.
Read it your way
Every answer here is written twice. Flip the switch and the page rewrites itself.
Try it now · Plate 32
How do we see colour?
Sweep the rainbow, then run the screen trick: yellow with no yellow light.
PLATE 32 · THREE CONES, ALL OF COLOUR
Light source
Wavelength 580 nm
Sweep the rainbow and watch the three signals trade places.
Your eye has just three colour sensors — bluish, greenish, reddish. Every colour
you've ever seen is your brain reading the mix of those three signals. Try the
screen trick: red + green light makes your cones fire exactly like yellow light would,
so you see yellow — even though no yellow light exists there. Every screen you
own runs on this hack.
Every question
Your Body, answered twice.
Plate 32Open → How do we see colour? Your eye has only three colour sensors. Every sunset, painting, and screen you have ever seen is a three-number code, decoded by your brain. Plate 39Open → How does your heart work? A fist-sized pump that moves five litres a minute, services two separate circuits at once, and never takes a single beat off — for about three billion beats. Plate 42Open → How do vaccines work? A vaccine is a rehearsal. It lets your immune system meet a germ's disguise and learn its face — so the real fight, when it comes, is already won. Plate 47Open → Do we only use 10% of our brain? It's one of the most repeated 'facts' about the body — and it's completely false. There is no idle 90% waiting to be unlocked. Plate 48Open → Why do we yawn? One of the body's everyday mysteries: nobody is completely certain why we yawn — but we know it cools the brain a little, and, strangely, it spreads from person to person. Plate 49Open → Why do we dream? Every night your brain switches off your body, flickers its eyes, and runs vivid, impossible stories. We're still arguing about why — but we know exactly when it happens. Plate 50Open → Why do we forget? Forgetting feels like a failure, but it's the brain working as designed — and once you see the curve, you can beat it with a handful of well-timed reminders. Plate 51Open → How does caffeine work? Coffee doesn't give you energy. It hides your tiredness by jamming the very receptors that are trying to tell you you're sleepy — and the bill is only deferred, never paid. Plate 52Open → Why do we sleep at all? We spend a third of our lives unconscious and defenceless — an evolutionary gamble so large it must buy something essential. Two hidden forces decide exactly when it collects. Plate 87Open → How do we hear? A sound is just air being squeezed. Your ear turns that squeeze into bones knocking, fluid sloshing, and finally a feeling. Plate 88Open → Why do we get goosebumps? The bumps on your cold arms are tiny muscles trying to fluff up fur you no longer have. Plate 89Open → Why do we hiccup? A hiccup is a muscle misfiring and a door slamming — a small glitch in the rhythm of your breath. Plate 149Open → How does your sense of balance work? You can stand on one foot with your eyes shut. Nothing is touching you, nothing is pushing you upright. So what is keeping track of which way is up? Plate 150Open → How does your body stay the same temperature? Step out into a freezing morning or a baking afternoon and your inside barely moves off 37 degrees. Something is fighting hard, every second, to hold that line. Plate 171Open → Why do we sneeze? A sneeze is your nose pressing its panic button. When something tickles the nerves inside, the irritation builds until your brain fires a reflex: a deep breath, then a blast at around 50 km/h to blow the intruder out. Plate 175Open → What happens to food after you swallow it? Swallowing is just the start. Your food takes a day-long trip down about seven metres of tube, squeezed along by muscle waves while each station adds its own juices to break it apart.
— ;colony