Sensory Systems/Appendix

Spectrum

If light passes through a prism, a colour spectrum will be formed at the other end of the prism ranging from red to violet. The wavelength of the red light is from 650nm to 700nm, and the violet light is at around 400nm to 420nm. This is the EM range detectable for the human eye.

Colour spectrum produced by a prism

Colour Models

The colour triangle is often used to illustrate the colour-mixing effect. The triangle entangles the visible spectrum, and a white dot is located in the middle of the triangle. Because of additive colour mixing property of red (700nm), green(546nm) and blue(435nm), every colour can be produced by mixing those three colours.

The RGB color-triangle

History of Sensory Systems

This Wikibook was started by engineers studying at ETH Zurich as part of the course Computational Simulations of Sensory Systems. The course combines physiology with an emphasis on the sensory systems, programming and signal processing. There is a plethora of information regarding these topics on the internet and in the literature, but there's a distinct lack of concise texts and books on the fusion of these 3 topics. The world needs a structured and thorough overview of biology and biological systems from an engineering point of view, which is what this book is trying to correct. We will start off with the Visual System, focusing on the biological and physiological aspects, mainly because this will be used in part to grade our performance in the course. The other part being the programming aspects have already been evaluated and graded. It is the authors' wishes that eventually information on physiology/biology, signal processing AND programming shall be added to each of the sensory systems. Also we hope that more sections will be added to extend the book in ways previously not thought of.

The original title of the Wikibook, Biological Machines, stressed the technical aspects of sensory system. However, as the wikibook evolved it became a comprehensive overview of human sensory systems, with additional emphasis on technical aspects of these systems. This focus is better represented with Sensory Systems, the new wikibook title since December 2011.

In 2015, the content became too big for the original structure. "Neurosensory Implants" and "Computer Models" became separate chapters, and the "Non-Primates" section was split, into "Arthropods" and "Other Animals".