Download one of these color-identifier apps to your cell phone for some summer ‘staycation’ fun. Stop and measure the roses!

I did so with the top-rated Color Grab. It reported “Brilliant Rose” and “Golden Yellow” for the flowers in my vase.

The ‘heads-up’ about Color Grab came from Oliver Thunich—a master statistician who teaches DOE for our German affiliate Statcon. He came up with an innovative way to demonstrate mixture design for optimal formulation by blending three juices: clear apple, passion fruit, and pink grapefruit.

Using Design-Expert® software Oliver developed an experiment with 20 recipes that varied the ingredients in an optimal way to model the resulting color in RGB (three responses).

Based on the results, I came up with the ideal formulation (flagged on the 3d graph) to produce a Pure Red color with as little of the expensive passion fruit as possible.

My high point in coloring came in kindergarten when the teacher sent me home after coloring with a black crayon on black paper—just too dark by her reckoning. However, now that I know that color can be engineered, I may pick it up again. In any case, I do appreciate an array of red, green and blue (i.e., RGB) and all that’s in between, especially in a floral display.

P.S. A hummingbird just flew up to my home-office screen window—just a foot away from where I sit.  It would be interesting to see what the color identifier comes up with for this iridescent-feathered friend.