Does it have something to do with wavelengths of light?
In: 1
Electricity isn’t blue. Electricity isn’t actually any color at all because electricity is electrons and color is photon radiation.
The reason you see lightning and electrical sparks as a blueish color is because of the chemical composition of the air.
So imagine in simple terms, an atom is a bunch of protons and neutrons clumped together in the nucleus of the atom, and a lot of electrons orbiting the nucleus. Electrons orbit at a certain distance from the nucleus, and this is defined by the electron orbit. Each “orbit distance” defines a certain amount of energy the electron has in it. Higher orbits, those “further away” from the nucleus have more energy.
So when an electric current happens a whole bunch of electrons are just streaming through the air. SOME of these electrons will bounce into electrons in an atom. When this happens the two electrons merge together. Now it’s a super powerful stronger electron and it jumps way up to a higher orbit in the atom.
But it’s actually not stable there, like standing on the edge of a cliff. So it’s not stable and sometimes comes tumbling down back to its natural orbit where it’s supposed to be.
But what happens to all that extra energy? It gets released as light. How strong light. Wellll that depends on the atom in question, how many orbits of the electrons there are, how much space is between them etc etc etc.
In the atoms that make up our atmosphere the amount of energy that gets released is of the level of energy that corresponds with a kinda “blue”.
But that’s just the gasses in our atmosphere. Would you get other colors with different gasses? Yes! Absolutely.
That’s literally what a neon sign is. Those glowing reds and yellows and various and varied colors are just OTHER gasses that when you run electrons through them, give off a different kind of light because of different properties of those gas atoms.
Because it is very hot. Hot objects glow, and as you go hotter and hotter, you move from red to orange to yellow towards a blue white. Lightning heats up the air to extremely high temperatures for a fraction of a second, resulting in a blue white light.
Does it have something to do with wavelengths of light?
In: 1
Electricity isn’t blue. Electricity isn’t actually any color at all because electricity is electrons and color is photon radiation.
The reason you see lightning and electrical sparks as a blueish color is because of the chemical composition of the air.
So imagine in simple terms, an atom is a bunch of protons and neutrons clumped together in the nucleus of the atom, and a lot of electrons orbiting the nucleus. Electrons orbit at a certain distance from the nucleus, and this is defined by the electron orbit. Each “orbit distance” defines a certain amount of energy the electron has in it. Higher orbits, those “further away” from the nucleus have more energy.
So when an electric current happens a whole bunch of electrons are just streaming through the air. SOME of these electrons will bounce into electrons in an atom. When this happens the two electrons merge together. Now it’s a super powerful stronger electron and it jumps way up to a higher orbit in the atom.
But it’s actually not stable there, like standing on the edge of a cliff. So it’s not stable and sometimes comes tumbling down back to its natural orbit where it’s supposed to be.
But what happens to all that extra energy? It gets released as light. How strong light. Wellll that depends on the atom in question, how many orbits of the electrons there are, how much space is between them etc etc etc.
In the atoms that make up our atmosphere the amount of energy that gets released is of the level of energy that corresponds with a kinda “blue”.
But that’s just the gasses in our atmosphere. Would you get other colors with different gasses? Yes! Absolutely.
That’s literally what a neon sign is. Those glowing reds and yellows and various and varied colors are just OTHER gasses that when you run electrons through them, give off a different kind of light because of different properties of those gas atoms.
Because it is very hot. Hot objects glow, and as you go hotter and hotter, you move from red to orange to yellow towards a blue white. Lightning heats up the air to extremely high temperatures for a fraction of a second, resulting in a blue white light.
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