Here's another puzzle for you:
Your screen (computer, NTSC/PAL/SECAM, etc.) simulates colors by
mixing varying amounts of Red, Green, and Blue. That method works,
even if the spectrum used has extremely sharp peaks! It can produce
orange, yellow, indigo, and violet, even though there is NO light of
those exact specific frequencies!
Not quite. It can cause the human visual system to produce perceptions
which match fairly closely those produced by orange, yellow, etc light.
It can't actually produce orange, yellow, etc, light, nor is it likely
to fool a visual system (organic or electronic) that doesn't have
response curves reasonably close to those of the human visual system.
(With suitable recalibration it might be able to fool some of them.)
Pantone is the acknowledged form of color matching for
any serious
usage. "What color is it? Specify the Pantone number."
Only for things where it's human perception that matters. For certain
other things you may have to actually describe the whole spectrum,
which, even aside from the degree of approximation involved, is a lot
more information than is contained in a Pantone number.
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