Editing 2734: Electron Color

{{comic
| number    = 2734
| date      = February 6, 2023
| title     = Electron Color
| image     = electron_color_2x.png
| imagesize = 568x256px
| noexpand  = true
| titletext = There's quark color, but that's not really color--it's just an admission by 20th century physicists that numbers are boring.
}}

==Explanation==
In this comic [[Miss Lenhart]] is teaching a school physics class. One of her students asks what the color of electrons is.

This is a relevant question for a kid to ask since on many scientific diagrams of atoms, the subatomic particles have been assigned colors to identify them for the reader. Neutrons are generally red, green, or gray; protons red or green and electrons might be blue or yellow. But there is no accepted rule for coloring such diagrams, so the kid may be confused. Additionally, some scientific diagrams use color coding rather than actually representative colors, and the kid may be wondering what color particles actually are.

Miss Lenhart correctly responds that ''...'color' isn't even defined for them,'' and states that, unlike the diagrams, which are colored for convenience, the particles are not colored. Her explanation is incorrect, however: ''They're too small to interact with visible light, ...'' This is a simplification; in fact, every optical effect in our world is due to electrons interacting with light. That leads to color because the electrons are usually bound to various atomic nuclei in molecules etc., which leads to differences in how they take up and give out various energies of photon. But the electrons merely govern the possible quanta of energy changes that influence the broad spectrum of light by which matter is seen; they don't reflect or absorb wavelengths themselves, which is what Miss Lenhart is presumably referring to.

She then continues by saying that electrons are definitely yellow. The reason for this isn't clear.  She may be:
* meaning that they should be yellow on diagrams, because she feels this is the correct way to depict them in drawings of atoms,
* referring to the Greek etymology of the word electron ({{w|elektron (resin)|elektron}} is an old name for amber, a yellow gem),
* merely teasing her young pupils, or
* stating how she feels they would be, if they could possess color. 

But her off-panel pupils take her word for it. One of the kids says "I knew it", to the "fact" that electrons are yellow, and likewise the other pupils completely ignore what Miss Lenhart just told them. The debate then starts as one pupil claims "''and protons are red?''", and another chimes in, with a "''No, they're gray!''" This only makes sense in a debate of how to draw atoms, not regarding their actual color, as Miss Lenhart just explained.

The opinions over the colors are probably based on what kind of diagrams people were initially exposed to, leading to a predisposition to think that those colors are 'correct'.

Although individual electrons do not have a color, it's possible to produce a solution of {{w|Solvated_electron|so-called 'solvated' electrons}}. In ammonia and amines, in certain concentrations, the solution color is blue, and in higher concentrations metallic gold to bronze.

The title text refers to the {{w|color charge}} property of quarks, a property which is part of {{w|quantum chromodynamics}}. In quantum chromodynamics, a quark's color can take one of three values or charges: red, green, and blue. An antiquark can take one of three anticolors: called antired, antigreen, and antiblue. As mentioned by [[Randall]], these have nothing to do with color as we know it, but is just a way to represent interactions between quarks in a sufficiently analogous fashion that avoids inventing entirely new words to describe a particular threefold quality of the necessary {{w|color confinement|inter-quark groupings}}. And he jokingly says that the 20th century physicists that came up with the three color system did this as as admission that numbers are boring. They could just have called the color charges "1", "2" and "3", though this may imply an unwarranted hierarchy, progression or other standard mathematical relationship that does not actually apply.

==Transcript==
:[Miss Lenhart is teaching a class. A boy with spiky hair sits at his desks with his hand raised asking a question. Jill sits in front of him looking back at him while leaning an arm on the back of her chair.]
:Miss Lenhart: You have a question?
:Boy: Yeah-What color are electrons and protons? Are they yellow? Red? Blue?

:[Zoom in on Miss Lenhart's head.]
:Miss Lenhart: Subatomic particles don't have a color.
:Miss Lenhart: They're too small to interact with visible light, so "color" isn't even defined for them.

:[Zoom back out but only showing Miss Lenhart. Three pupils reply from off-panel with speech lines coming from starburst at the right edge of the panel.]
:Miss Lenhart: That said, electrons are '''''definitely''''' yellow.
:Off-panel voice 1: I knew it!
:Off-panel voice 2: And protons are red, right?
:Off-panel voice 3: ''What?'' No! They're gray!

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Miss Lenhart]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Jill]]
[[Category:Kids]] <!-- The boy is a boy and thus not adult Hairy -->
[[Category:Physics]]