Well – a lot of colours you see are to do with molecules. They absorb light, which changes the way they look, or they absorb regular light and emit light with a certain colour.
Lots of molecules that are responsible for colours have a certain thing in their molecular structure – a phenol. A phenol is a ring of 6 carbon atoms with an oxygen coming off one of them and a hydrogen also on the oxygen. So it’s like water (H2O) except in place of one of the hydrogens you have this ring of 6 carbons.
These phenols, usually with other stuff hanging off the other carbons, are often good at absorbing light of certain frequencies. The colour of wine comes from some stuff with phenols in. Tea has that dark colour because tannins have phenols in them. Litmus – the stuff on the paper we use to test for acid and base – is a bunch of natural molecules covered in phenols.
Phenols look one colour when the H is attached to the O. When the H is removed (by adding a base like sodium hydroxide) the colour changes. The reason for that is that when you take the H off the molecule becomes a bit smaller, but it still has the same (actually a bit more) number of electrons to contain within the structure. The effect is to change the wavelength of light the molecule absorbs the most, and so what it looks like.
Turns out with your pH dye with the long name that that makes it pink. With a big computer and a clever chemist, you could have predicted that, if you knew the structure of the molecule. But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s pretty.
Nice.
Well – a lot of colours you see are to do with molecules. They absorb light, which changes the way they look, or they absorb regular light and emit light with a certain colour.
Lots of molecules that are responsible for colours have a certain thing in their molecular structure – a phenol. A phenol is a ring of 6 carbon atoms with an oxygen coming off one of them and a hydrogen also on the oxygen. So it’s like water (H2O) except in place of one of the hydrogens you have this ring of 6 carbons.
These phenols, usually with other stuff hanging off the other carbons, are often good at absorbing light of certain frequencies. The colour of wine comes from some stuff with phenols in. Tea has that dark colour because tannins have phenols in them. Litmus – the stuff on the paper we use to test for acid and base – is a bunch of natural molecules covered in phenols.
Phenols look one colour when the H is attached to the O. When the H is removed (by adding a base like sodium hydroxide) the colour changes. The reason for that is that when you take the H off the molecule becomes a bit smaller, but it still has the same (actually a bit more) number of electrons to contain within the structure. The effect is to change the wavelength of light the molecule absorbs the most, and so what it looks like.
Turns out with your pH dye with the long name that that makes it pink. With a big computer and a clever chemist, you could have predicted that, if you knew the structure of the molecule. But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s pretty.
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