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Why don't country flags use the color purple?

Lesson created by Cynthia Silva using TED-Ed's lesson creatorVideo from After Skool YouTube channel

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There are 196 countries in the world today and virtually none of them have purple on their national flag. So what’s wrong with purple? After Skool explains how the color was worth more than gold.

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Avatar for Cynthia Silva
Lesson creator

In economics, supply and demand explains the relationship between producers and buyers. Watch this one-minute video (link below) to learn about how supply and demand works. After, explain how supply and demand explains the drop in interest for the color purple in the 1800s?

Supply and demand explained in one Minute (link)

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Avatar for Jia-wen Gao
Lesson completed

As chemist Perkin patented the purple dye and manufactured it which made purple dye supply increase and purple dye become affordable for the average. However, just because it become affordable and the elites wouldn't take it as a symbol any more, this effect may indirectly caused the decrease in demand as well.