Colors Make Sense!

Thursday morning, I had an epiphany.

Colors make sense now.

I remember as a child, I was trying to figure out why some objects were the colors they were. Like why is an apple red or green, or why is a banana yellow? When I was small, I tried to work it out and came up with a hypothesis that atoms were like mini prisms that split the colors of the light. It all clicked for me early Thursday morning, though I may still be wrong, but this feels closer to what makes sense.

So, I was watching a YouTube video from the channel History of the Universe called "What is Reality?" and it is fascinating! Very long, I'm watching it in chunks so I can get the most out of it. The section I just finished watching was about what atoms are made up of, what science has discovered, and how that evolved throughout history to what we know today.

Basically, atoms are made up of lots of tiny things, but what I'm going to focus on is the electrons.

I knew from school that when gases are hot enough, they produce certain lights on the visible spectrum. Thats how neon lights work. And, we know that when a fire poker is in the flames for a while, it heats up and glows red. Basically, this is because the electrons in the atoms exist in certain levels of orbits, and added energy increases that level increasing the distance between the electron and the nucleus, and decreasing that energy lowers the level bringing it closer. When an object is heated enough that the electrons gain that energy, they are also simultaneously releasing that energy and that back-and-forth movement of the electron causes light waves to be emitted from the object, hence the glow.

So, that is what I knew up to this point, but I still didn't understand why objects were whatever color they were. I had basically just chalked it up to "it is what it is". :P

But! As I was thinking about electrons and how according to scientists and what they've discovered so far, even in their stable state when they aren't heated and releasing energy, they still move at near lightspeed and have a wave-like motion around the nucleus. This would suggest that they have certain light waves that are already bouncing around in there.

SO, taking that along with my understanding of soundwaves - when a certain sound wave is produced against another, it cancels out the noise (which is how active noise-cancelling headphones work) - it must be true for light as well, certain light is absorbed where other wavelengths are reflected. I came to understand that those wavelengths are absorbed because of the natural wavelengths already present in the movement of the electrons and the movement of these electrons would cancel out certain wavelengths of light leaving behind the colors we see the object to be.

Anyhow, that's what I've worked out so far, if you have any thoughts or comments, feel free to post them below!

Thanks!

- Pink Cat