Talk:2734: Electron Color

Electrons have no color?! BUt lIgHTnIng strIKeS aRe YEllOw, aND LigHTNing IS MaDe uP of eLECTrOns.172.71.254.115 22:43, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Actually most colors are emitted by electrons orbiting atoms after absorbing light. The color electrons emit depend on their kinetic energy and available places they can travel, a tiny bit similar to how things change color as they get hotter, but more extreme and general. 172.70.114.198

It may refer to the Greek etymology of the word "electron". Originally it meant amber, a yellow gem. 172.68.118.146 23:20, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

I can't do formatting, I'm new. Sorry! (no signature left on comment)

To me, this is 1000% building on the idea of debating the colors of school subjects. I've added a bit of explanation to the text about it. I used my own color associations & reasons (science = green, history = red) as an example, and I'm sure people will disagree with me. Leave your color/subject associations in a reply to this comment, could be a fun little debate! (also, English = blue) Zman350x (talk) 23:50, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

SocStud is yellow, Math is red, Science is green?, ELA is gray, French is blue, and orange is my least favorite subject out of the rest. I have gotten into many arguments with my friends.

172.70.230.157 00:10, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Science = Green (green flask bubbling)

Social Studies = Blue (blue and green globe, green is taking)

Math = Red (math is reliable, red is a strong color so i associate it with reliability)

English = Yellow (all other colors are taken)

Also electrons are blue

Iffy (talk) 23:53, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Hm! I've never heard of school subjects having any assigned colors; much less any debate about it! If we're identifying them by the folders they're kept in, my favorite subject was Ferrari & my least favorite was Porsche.

ProphetZarquon (talk) 04:41, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

I don't recall colour-coded (UK) schoolbooks, in particular (except the "red pirate, green pirate, blue pirate, etc" stories for young kids, the red pirate like only rubies, the green one emeralds, the blue probably sapphires, and had clothing/etc that matched, naturally), but I had (have still, somewhere!) a collection of Usborne Encyclopaedias at home with a veritable rainbow of colours. Mathematics was yellow, I think, Computers a shade of blue, one of the Red or off-Red (slightly pinker, but still deep red) might have been Physics (had geophysics in it, IIRC), I think History was a light-green. I'm sure I never had the whole set, but I had enough to arrange in as close to Richard Of York order as I felt most content to do, when on the bookshelf.

Obviously there were colours involved with the school stuff. I'm sure different levels of SPMG (Scottish Primary Maths Group?) workbooks were colour-coded, perhaps more for the benefit of the teacher, though the later SMP ones were probably more just identified as "13a", "5b", etc, to work through various sub-subjects and the increasingly advanced techniques thereof, perhaps coloured with highlights only to not be boring black-on-white monochrome covers.

And there's so many other colour-classifications that I instituted for myself, over the years, showing just how useful a hue can be to represent and differentiate a class of something, such as various 3M-style "post-it"-like arrow stickers stuck into the pages of a book for quick reference to all instances of one particular thing or another. For which I suppose I'm grateful to not having any notable form of colour-blindness, to limit my options. 172.70.91.114 08:20, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

I believe this comic was made in response to a book talk Randall did in Seattle, where this question was actually asked to him in person! If you want to hear it yourself, someone recorded the talk here: https://www.reddit.com/r/xkcd/comments/xjuc4i/a_recording_and_autotranscript_of_randalls_latest/ 172.71.142.6 00:45, 7 February 2023 (UTC) A random new user

Was it the dorky randall with red hair or the photogenic one with brown hair and blue eyes or am I going wildly mad? 172.70.114.198 00:51, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Am I crazy, I always thought of electrons as blue to contrast with the protons which are red172.70.211.89 04:47, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

"This comic appears to "elevate" that discussion to the college level." - considering that the students are considerably smaller than the teacher (notice the heads), I seriously doubt this is meant to be set in a college classroom - high school at most, IMHO. Also, "One common debate among schoolchildren is over the "color" of various subjects. Because of the brightly colored folders commonly used to separate subjects in the binder of a young student, the students tend to associate those colors with the subject." - well, not in any school I ever attended, nor with any school class I've ever worked with. I'd be inclined to dispute that this is at all common. 172.70.46.85

I agree that this is probably not supposed to be college-level, but the color-subject coordination is definitely real (albeit not a very common topic of debate). 162.158.90.38 08:01, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Electrons are blue, right? In all my textbooks (Germany) electrons are blue. Is this a generally accepted addition? 198.41.242.166 07:13, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

I stopped the explanation saying that electrons were (by implication, solely) yellow. If green is used for a nucleon (neutron? red being proton?), they might choose blue for an electron, as contrast. Or black dot or white (black-outlined) small circle to contrast with whatever the nucleons are with their much bigger circles clumped in the middle.

But, given other regular colour-conventions, I could imagine yellow as a popular 'electron' colour. Either in its own right (influencing the choices given to the other things depicted) or as the main obviously remaining option (the other things having been decided upon first). Horses for courses. And I can imagine cultural/national differences (e.g. what colours your household wiring was set up as, at least before EU standardisation but then red and black still exists in the mindset,cdespite blue and brown, or whatever it might have been) if not localised 'linguistic puns' to make some choices more 'obvious' than others. 172.70.91.114 08:20, 7 February 2023 (UTC)