English is blue and math is red, but I can’t exactly tell you why. The internet has seen a trend fueled by Generation Z in recent months of odd statements relating Thursday and November, or 5×5 and Friday, but the only real explanation that they offer is a similar “energy” or “vibe” that they get from the random associated items.
If so many people find themselves agreeing with such nonsensical statements, there must be some sort of explanation, right?
Chloe Pennington, a junior criminology and political science major at North Carolina State University, said that it reminded her of a video that she watched in her high school English class about synesthesia.
According to Psychology Today, synesthesia can be simply defined as a neurological condition that means “when one sense is activated, another unrelated sense is activated at the same time.” In this way, people with the condition can relate certain senses to other concepts and senses that they perceive, such as seeing colors when listening to music. Pennington said that, while some people’s experiences are much more defined than others, “everyone has it a little bit.”
While synesthesia may provide some explanation to this question, another answer may be the way in which we were raised and taught in school. In a survey of 241 people on Instagram, 93 percent said that science is green and 78 percent said that math is red. When answering these questions herself, Kate Durgin, a junior theatre studies major at Wagner College, said that she was reminded of her notebooks that she used for each subject.
She also tried to explain her answers by referring to popular phonics systems and even the fact that she is left-handed, but ultimately she said, “I think so much of it is just based on our childhood experiences and what something feels like… if you asked someone these questions who grew up with a very different education system they would probably have very different answers.”
So, there may be no definite answer for why science is green, it’s just intuition. Out of 241 people, 63 percent agreed that English is blue, but later in the survey, 68 percent said that language arts is yellow. These two subjects are arguably the same in our country’s school systems, but the majority of people surveyed said they are instinctively represented by different colors in their minds.
While these opinions may lack clear logic, an individual’s feelings are often steadfast and hard to argue. Carrington Wigfall, a sophomore theatre tech and design major at Winthrop University, said that “whenever it comes up, my opinions are solid. I can’t change it…someone told me once that science isn’t green and that’s impossible.”
In the midst of conducting the survey on Instagram, two people who accidentally voted for purple instead of green as relating to science were adamant enough to send a direct message and clear their name of their mistake. They couldn’t just move on and keep scrolling, they had to take time to make sure that the “right” opinion was heard.
Pennington said “I feel like everybody has a very specific view of everything in their head…the way one person might feel is completely different than the next person and…there’s no right or wrong.”
Graphic by Lizzy Talbert
