color is, afterall, only the energy of the photons absorbed by your eye, right? Why can't green and yellow be representative of the 'actual material' of the atom? That would only mean those atoms reflect/emit electromagnetic radiation in waves with the frequency corresponding to yellow and green 'color'. Erm, yeah I'm trying to be careful how I say things because I'm by no means a chem smartie pantsthe colours for example are not indicative of the actual colour of the material
"color is, afterall, only the energy of the photons absorbed by your eye, right?"
Well colour is caused by the differing energy of photons, yes.
"Why can't green and yellow be representative of the 'actual material' of the atom?"
Well I suppose i really shouldn't talk about the "actual" colour of the material since colour is not a "real" property its one we make up in our heads, but the energy of the photons that result in colour are real values.
Blue is about 400 nm radiation, red is about 700 nm radiation, when i say that the colours in the STM picture are not "real", i mean that the atoms are not "actually" that colour ie. they don't give off (or absorb) the right wavelength of radiation that would make them say green.
Those colours are added after the main spectroscopy is done for ease of labelling.
"That would only mean those atoms reflect/emit electromagnetic radiation in waves with the frequency corresponding to yellow and green 'color'"
Right, but they don't, if graphite absorbed/emited the right wavenlength of radiation to be green then graphite would be green and it's not.
You could colour in the atoms the "right" colour, but that would be an addition afterwards, STM does not pick up radiation hence colour cannot really be applied to it.
What it gives you is a picture deduced from the potential difference between the tip of needle and the atoms below.
Last edited by Clyde; 02-11-2003 at 10:41 AM.
Well you obviously know your stuff, and I see what you've been trying to say to me, that the colors were added in basically to just help the reader be able to see the stuff better. I still think it's cool that we can at least 'see' atoms with a STM. I wonder how long it took to build that (from conceiving the idea to actually building what we have today). Probably a great engineering effort.
While most of this seems impossible in a practical sense, who knows? Would people in the 17th century understand quantum mechanics? People in the 20th century usually didn't. There might be all kinds of amazing scientific developments in the next century. Why, Clyde might even renounce evolution!
Truth is a malleable commodity - Dick Cheney
One cool application I could think of is with computer games. If you could get all of the information about a person, and send it to a computer game, you could have a computer game where the character is "you". It would be pretty cool for online games I would assume
Lol, than it is you who is getting shot
-:{XR3D403}:-
Gimme info!!
"I still think it's cool that we can at least 'see' atoms with a STM"
I certainly agree that it's cool =).
"There might be all kinds of amazing scientific developments in the next century"
I hope there will be, who knows i might even be part of one
"Why, Clyde might even renounce evolution! "
Heh, somehow I doubt it
