Yeah, I know, I know, that’s not the right order for the colors of the spectrum. (It’s Roy G. Biv, red-orange-yellow-green-blue-indigo-violet).
The colors for the most part are in order from brightest to darkest, with the exception of those at the beginning of the spectrum, where it would seem logical for them to be in the order yellow-orange-red.
What am I missing? Be kind.
“Nothing is so firmly believed as what is least known” - Michel Gyquem de Montaigne
They’re not really in order from lightest to darkest. They’re in order of primary colors and the colors the primaries make when mixed. So…red + yellow = orange, yellow + blue = green, blue + red = indigo & violet.
This is my elementary art class explanation, though. I’m sure someone else has a more scientific explanation involving light fractals or some other such nonsense (can you tell I was an English major?).
Close, C3. Actually, it’s the order that the colors fall in the spectrum. Visible light (for humans) start at red and finish at violet. The rest of the order is the order that they fall in as the light wavelengths decrease. Before red is infrared and after violet is ulrtaviolet.
And strangely, color “darkness” is very subjective.
You would think red is brighter than blue. But if a US flag’s images is shown on a black-and-white TV, the stripes look darker than the star field background.
I noticed this during the 1976 presidential election coverage. One network was coloring in states as their results came in: red for Democrat (Carter) and blue for Republican (Ford). I was watching on a B/W TV and thought Ford was winning. But the commentator kept saying Carter was ahead. So I went to our new color TV, and sure enough, Carter was ahead. I then played with the color level and saw that on a gray scale, red was darker.
Wrong thinking is punished, right thinking is just as swiftly rewarded. You’ll find it an effective combination.
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Actually, it has to do with the frequency of the wavelengths of visible light.
IIRC, red light has the longest wavelength, and violet the shortest. (I may have that reversed and welcome the correction.) White light gets split into the rainbow via refraction, and the angle of refraction is dependent of the color’s wavelength. Longer wavelengths get refracted less than shorter ones, so red ends up on one end and violet on the other.
Basically it’s what MrKnowItAll said, just expanded a little. 
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ACTUALLY,
i got no clue, i just wanted to say actually and be special like the rest of you! 
[hijack]
Aren’t tests to be conducted in ATMB?
Milossarain: Catch-22?
[/hijack]
-Dave
“Violence is the last refuge of teh ignorant.”
-I. Asimov