Do atoms have a colour?

Question

I presume that the colours we see in our everyday life is due to molecular structure, Grey coloured Graphite structure can be altered to give a Clear Dimon.
Can it be that atoms are too small to have any colour?
But what in a metallic bonding gives gold one look and silver another?
Am i just looking at this in a wrong way and thats the reason that it doesnt make any sence?

Answer 1

You're asking an almost philosophical question, so bear with me for the response.

Color in the conventional sense is the part of the spectrum of light that is between 400-700 nanometers in length. Since the biggest atom around is more than 1000 times smaller than the shortest visible wavelength of light, no atoms have color in the conventional sense.

X-rays do interact with atoms just like regular light interacts with larger objects, and different wavelengths of x-rays interact with different sized atoms more, so just like different wavelengths of light between 400-700 nanometers in length interact differently with different materials and give rise to what we call color, x-rays between ~0.01-1 nanometers in length interact different with different atoms, and could be considered a "color," although it would be more metaphorical.

The reason many things you see have color is because they have delocalized electrons with energies at the range that can interact with visible light (if you've taken physics, E=h*nu, and c=gamma*nu, so the energy of something can be correlated to its wavelength). These typically consist of larger molecules, not individual atoms. Graphite, for example, has delocalized electrons and can therefore absorb light of every color (hence, it's black). Diamond has no delocalized electrons, and does not absorb light. The reason it "shines" is because parts of the actual diamond are roughly the size of visible light, so it can still interact with light.

In metals, the valence electrons are generally delocalized along the entire size of the object (which is why metals conduct electricity, which consists of moving electrons, so well). Silver is actually not very different from many other metals in color and appearance, it is just not very reactive, not very toxic, and easy to work with. Gold (and platinum) which have distinctive colors, are due to fairly complicated concepts. Essentially, since the nucleii of gold and platinum have so many protons, the attraction between the nucleii and the outer-electrons causes the electrons to accelarate to speeds that are close to the speed of light. When speeds get close to the speed of light all sorts of crazy phenomena start happening, which are called "relativistic" effects, after Einstein's theory of general relativity. Essentially, gold and platinum both have their distinctive colors because of the relativistic effects of their heavy nucleii.

This is a complicated topic, and the relativistic effects for example are not typically covered until a graduate-level course in inorganic chemistry. If you are thinking about these issues realize that you may have a brilliant and very-well paying career ahead of you as a chemist, physicist, or material-scientist. The interactions of light with materials are very important to everything from solar cells to displays like televisions, projectors, media (CDs/DVDs are read by laser beams), communications (fiber-optics transmit light instead of electricity), etc. I highly encourage you to take some more advanced classes and consider a career in these fields. Good luck.

Answer 2

seen easy has wavelengths between 350nm and 800 nm. Atoms are frequently a sprint under a million nm for the period of. So easy purely does not word somebody atom. colour is all approximately how a substance absorbs diverse wavelengths of sunshine and reflects others so if easy does not word an merchandise then it does not incredibly have a colour. we could take carbon. the two person-friendly allotropes are graphite and diamond. Graphite is black (nicely gray actual) while diamond is white. (thoroughly clean meaning it does not take up easy. That makes it white to me.) so which you will discover purely what a distinction the crystal shape makes. Amorphous carbon is the closest we get to plenty to carbon atoms with out any shape. (it quite is carbon powder or sticks made by skill of gluing the powder into rods.) it quite is black. Professionally i'm frequently asked questions like, "ok. i understand xxx has no answer yet whilst it did what would the respond be?" now and returned the solutions are smart. So besides the reality that carbon atoms have not got any colour, in case you suggested, "look what colour would they have if that they had a colour?" then i'd say "Black."

Answer 3

No, individual atoms do not have any colour. It is not meaningful to speak of "the colour of an atom", because individual atoms are far, far smaller than the wavelength of visible light (between 400 and 700 nanometres). The largest single atom known, francium, has a diameter of only 0·54 nanometre; the smallest, hydrogen, is 0·074 nanometre in diameter.

Attempting to 'see' atoms with visible light would be like a blind man trying to read embossed letters with his fingertips. If they are large enough (like one gets on a manhole cover), he can do it, but if they are are only 1 to 2 millimetres across (like this writing), it will be impossible for him.

Since colour is a perceptual phenomenon involving various wavelengths of visible light, individual atoms cannot be said to have colour.

One needs an aggregation of several thousand atoms before they can be made visible with a light microscope. Then, of course, they can have colour.

When playing with molecular models, you'll probably have noticed that carbon atoms are black, oxygen atoms red, nitrogen atoms blue and so on, but this doesn't actually mean that the atoms have colour. These colours are merely useful conventions to help the student visualise different molecules.

Answer 4

That is really a very tricky question. I'll try to write the answer so that Lincoln can understand most of it, but some bits will really be more directed at his parents/instructors.

What happens when we see a colour? We are seeing light of a particular wavelength or set of wavelengths coming from an object to our eye. Different wavelengths mean different colours. Red light has a wavelength around 0.7 thousandths of a millimetre, yellow is around 0.6, green around 0.5, blue around 0.45, and violet around 0.4. White is a mixture of all of the wavelengths.

There are two reasons why we might see a colour when we look at an object. The most usual reason is because white light (from daylight or the electric lamp in a room) has reflected off the object, but some wavelengths have been removed or "absorbed", and we see only the ones that are left. The other less usual possibility is because the object itself is giving off its own light of a particular colour -- a red hot piece of metal, for example, or a yellow sodium vapour lamp.

Do molecules have a colour, then?

Well, yes, sometimes they do! Because a single molecule of a substance can absorb light of one colour and transmit, reflect, or scatter other colours. Or if a single molecule of a substance gets hot, and has some spare energy, sometimes it can give off light of a particular colour to get rid of some of the excess energy. That is what is happening in a sodium vapour lamp -- it is just a whole lot of hot sodium atoms emitting light. If you separate out the colours by looking through a prism spectrometer, you will find that sodium vapour light is nearly all made up of just three wavelengths -- two very bright yellow lines, very close together, and a fainter red line.

Are the molecules of an object the same colour as the object itself?

Sometimes they are, and sometimes they are not. It all depends on the reason why the object scatters or reflects one wavelength of light and absorbs another. One reason is because the molecules in the object absorb one wavelength and not another. Molecules of dye that we use to colour clothes or the molecules that colour fruits and vegetables or the molecules of pigments in paints are the same colour as we see in the objects. But there are sometimes other reasons why things have colours. Sometimes it depends on how the light interacts not just with one molecule, but with a whole bunch of molecules. The colour of gold metal is only yellow when we have a large lot of gold atoms. Small particles of gold may be coloured purple or red. And we cannot really say what colour a single gold atom is. Sometimes the colour of an object does not depend on its molecules at all, but is a funny effect of its shape. It is possible for a regular shape pattern to make some wavelengths of light cancel themselves out. A good example is the colours in butterflies' wings, which are really the result of microscopic patterns of ridges on the scales. The colours that we see in opal and similar minerals also come into this category.

Answer 5

I'm not prepared to write an essay on the subject; suffice it to say when there are enough atoms together to be seen, then they exhibit colour by emitting light which hasn't been absorbed. Taken to extremes, if a group of atoms have a particular colour, then single ones have the very same colour, except that they're far too small to be visible.

Answer 6

Atoms are too small for us to see. And since we use visible light to see, the colors of visible light do not apply.

Atoms are on the order of Angstroms in diameter, which means they are about 1 x 10^-10 meters across....extremely tiny.
Visible light has a wavelength of between about 400 nanometers and 700 nanometers (1 nm = 1 x 10^-9 meters). The wavelength of visible light is several orders of magnitude (powers of ten) larger than the size of atoms; therefore we cannot see atoms with visible light.

When we look at something and see its color, we are seeing the color of light which is reflected / emitted from the atoms, but not the atoms themselves. The color of light reflected can very greatly between how the atoms are arranged on a microscopic level (like the example you have with the different allotropes of Carbon [graphite and diamonds]), but also with the very small macroscopic features of the surface as well.
The electrons around the atoms play a major role in this since it is they who interact with the light. Since light is an electromagnetic field, electrons will respond in some way they light is shown upon them (since they have an electric charge). The frequency of the light also is important since at certain frequencies of light, some materials appear transparent while at other frequencies the same materials appear opaque (for example, glass). Electrons can even absorb light energy and then re-emit photons at very specific frequencies as the electrons jump / decent energy levels.

Answer 7

Atoms in their ground states cannot have color in the sense that we see colors ranging from violet on the short-wavelength side to red on the long. This is because visible light is measured in wavelengths of 400-700 nanometers, whereas the sizes of atoms are ~100 picometers. So atoms cannot absorb or reflect visible light.

Atoms can absorb and emit ultraviolet light by exciting their electrons to upper energy levels and relaxing again. The same for x-ray light, where the "light" excites electrons in K-shells right next to large nuclei (atomic number > 20). And the nuclei can absorb gamma rays by excitation to upper nuclear energy states, and emit other gamma rays on relaxation to ground.

The shiny orangey color we see in copper is the result of interactions of light with zillions of atoms at once, not just one.

Answer 8

I really like both fruits and fresh vegetables better, however they look and taste. You desire a little of both.

Answer 9

If perhaps it's a fruit they have seeds, otherwise it's a vegetable. And vegetables are usually grown in the ground while fruits are grown in trees.

Answer 10

Colour is nothing but the frequency of the light we see. Each atom can emit light of a certain frequency under certain conditions. So I think that atoms do have colour. It has got to do with the electrons.