if photons don’t have color, why does light have different color

Question

if photons don’t have color, why does light have different color

In: 1

Answer 1

Photons can be associated to specific colors, but not all colors can be associated to a specific photon.

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Think of it like notes on a guitar.

If I pluck an open string and it starts vibrating at ~330Hz then listeners might recognize *”Oh, that’s a pure E note!”*.

Alternatively, if I put my fingers on a certain combination of frets and strum them together, the listeners might say *”Oh, that’s an E-major chord!”*.

Then, if some newbie comes up to me and says *”What string do I pluck to play that E-major chord you just played!?”* I’d have to explain that a “chord” isn’t played on a single string the way a “note” is, and that it actually requires multiple notes be played at once to produce the right sound.

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Photons and light are the same way.

Any individual photon basically acts like a specific pure “note” based on it’s frequency and many of these notes get associated with specific “colors”. But! There are other “colors” that are more like “chords” and cannot be recreated by a single pure photon because they actually need multiple notes to be played together to produce the right feel.