What are colours, in the context of particle physics?

Answer 1

Meaning #1: a distinguishing emblem
Synonym: colors


Meaning #2: a flag that shows its nationality
Synonym: colors

Answer 2

Well first it would not be in the context of particle physics. Particle physics deals mainly with sub-atomic particles whose nature is much smaller than the wavelengths of light and so are not detectable in the way we use light to view things.
In the context of classical physics white light is composed of multiple frequencies of light each one having a specific wavelength. That wavelength causes a different energy reading in the cones in your eye and your brain interprets this change as a color. Each visible object absorbes and reflects certain colors of light. The light we see when we look at an object is actually the light that has not been absorbed and has been reflected back. So a green ball has absorbed all of the other wavelengths of light except the green wavelength.

Answer 3

Well, there is white light which is all the colors combined and there is black which is no colors. Every other color is a fraction of the white light (from the sun or a lightbulb) which is reflected back to your eye. If you see something as yellow, for example, it means that the object is absorbing red and blue and reflecting yellow light back to your eye.
If light is a wave, (which it is, and a particle too!) that wave has a specefic wavelength, i.e. red light is 600 nm (or somewhere around there). When the particles in an object are 600 nm long, then red light is absorbed and we see blue and yellow, or green. When something has different sized particles in it that are 600 nm and say 400 nm then it absorbs red and blue so we see yellow. Get it? If it is black maybe the particle sezes aren't within the range of the white light spectrum.

Answer 4

Sorcia is correct. Our current understanding of particles such as the proton and neutron is that they are each made up of three quarks. A force called the strong nuclear force binds them together so tightly that they cannot be separated.

Particles called hadrons (which excludes electrons and neutrinos and the like) either contain three quarks, or a quark and an antiquark. When developing a theory of the strong force, there needed to be some mechanism that would allow combinations of three quarks, or a quark and an antiquark, to exist but that ruled out other combinations.

The solution was to assign an extra property to the quarks. Protons and neutrons are made of up and down quarks, which have different values of electric charge. The extra property says that there are three types of up quarks, three types of down quarks, and so on. The only combinations are allowed are combinations of three quarks where each one has a different value for this extra property, or a quark and an antiquark whose values of this property cancel each other out.

For convenience, this property is called color, although it has nothing to do with light. There are three colors of quarks - let's call them red, green, and blue - and each has an anticolor - antired, antigreen, and antiblue. (Sorry.) Combining all three colors yields a particle that is colorless (somewhat like combining different colored light beams), and combining a color with its anticolor also yields a colorless object. No object with a net "color charge" can exist.

Answer 5

The colours red, green and blue are used as a shorthand way of describing different types of quarks and gluons in Quantum Chromodynamics.

Answer 6

colours are anything that when combined under normal temperature results in a different substance and when separated returns to its original form