Counterintuitive Facts (72): You Know Every Physics Formula About Red, But You've Never Seen Red

I. Mary is a super scientist. Since birth, she has lived in a room with only black and white colors. Black and white walls. Black and white books. Black and white monitors. She has never seen any color.

II. But this doesn't stop her from becoming the world's greatest color scientist. She learned all physical and neurological knowledge about color vision. She knows "red" is electromagnetic waves with wavelength around 700 nanometers. She knows L type cone cells in the retina are most sensitive to this wavelength. She knows how signals travel along the optic nerve to the primary visual cortex. She knows how the brain processes, encodes, stores this information. Her understanding of "red" is deeper than any physicist, neuroscientist, or painter. She possesses all physical information about re