this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Eh, I think it's an hard clear Yes. The radiation released by an element when coming out of an excited state depends on the energy difference between N levels and it is generally consistent for that given element.

How do they get excited? You give them energy. How? One way is by shinning a light.

Is there a name for radiation of a specific frequency within the visible spectrum? Yes. A color.

All rare gas lightbulbs even have a specific color.

The only way for us to discount the emission specturm as a color is if we go philosophical about the nature of color. And that's for literary nerds, not physics nerds, and I doubt people google the former as frequently as the latter.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

True, but a childish intuition about "having a color" would most likely imply that you can see a structure of the thing (like a ball) that is colored in (which you can't with atoms). On the other hand if you consider an atom a tiny pointsource, like a star in the sky, then it makes sense again.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Instead of comparing it to a ball with colour on it, you could compare it to a ball of colour. Which atoms are.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

No they aren't. Atoms don't have a 'texture' or surface.