Your Friend the Photon
We perceive EM radiation with ? in the 400-700 nm range
That’s really an accident of nature
- The atmosphere lets through a lot of light in this region
- It falls in the 1-step excitation band for outer shell electrons
- It’s higher energy than thermal infrared, so heat (and your own body temperature) doesn’t swamp it
These are basically the same reasons why plants are green
Could/can change range by changing visual pigments
- Computer graphics images probably look pretty incorrect to animals
There is no reason why you couldn’t do CG with radio, gamma rays, or even sound
- Transparency and surface properties would change, of course
- Diffraction depends on wavelength