Here we go again! What Color is this Flip Flop, is it White and Gold? or Blue and Black?

‘The Dress’ – Original Viral Photo (Source: Wikipedia)

Do you remember ‘The Dress’?

In 2015, Scottish musician Caitlin McNeill in Tumblr posted a photo of a dress and the Internet couldn’t stop arguing about what color it was.

“guys please help me — is this dress white and gold , or blue and black? Me and my friends can’t agree and we are freaking the f*** out.” — Caitlin McNeill

Now, the Internet is going crazy again with this Havaianas flip flops photo! This was posted by @positivedemi last November 17 with a comment in Portuguese “que cor vocês tão vendo?”, asking ‘what color do you see?’

The FlipFlop (Source: Twitter – @positivedemi)

So, what colors DO you see?

Is it white or gold? or blue or black? or gold and blue? or blue and brown? or white and black? or something totally different?

Send your answer below at the comment section.

But don’t worry! This won’t be a long drawn out debate without any real answer. We offer you SCIENCE! 😀

The Science Behind It

Science explains the reason for this phenomenon is because of color perception; how our brains interprets lights thus recognizing a hue of color.

Photo of ‘The Dress’ in different angles (Source: Vice.com)

Our eyes have evolved to perceive colors in different times of day, the chromatic axis of the eyes. Daylight have different hues through out the day, pinkish red at dawn, blue-white at noontime, and then back down to reddish at twilight.

There are a number of related scientific investigation in neuroscience and vision science, with a number of papers published in peer-reviewed science journals. According to Science Daily, though the color of the object remains the same but “the wavelength composition of the light reflected from an object changes considerably in different conditions of illumination”.