An atom may be considered as an inert, unreactive particle as long as the energy of its interaction with other particles including photons is small enough so that the atom's electrons don't get excited. Atoms of inert gases like neon are the most tenaciously laid back. Still, as interaction energies increase, even they lose their inertness, and we ultimately get a soup of inert nuclei and electronsa highly excited plasma.
Increase the energy more actually, a lot more , and the nuclei are no longer so inert either. We get instead a brew of nucleonsas in a neutron star. Step up the energy some more, and we enter the realm of quarks. Here even nucleons are no longer inertand we have returned to the incredibly energetic, primordial conditions that prevailed shortly after the big bang. Answer originally posted December 4, Sign up for our email newsletter. Already a subscriber?
Sign in. Thanks for reading Scientific American. Create your free account or Sign in to continue. See Subscription Options. This is how neon lights work. So, if you wonder how neon signs have different colors , you may start to think of it as a science lab experiment. Gases produce a specific color when heated. With neon signs and neon lights, the neon sign makers use gases like neon, argon, helium, krypton, and xenon. These work similarly, but instead of neon they have mercury vapor inside , which produces some visible light, but mostly a lot of invisible ultraviolet light.
This light then strikes a fluorescent coating inside the tube that is chosen to produce the desired color. It's quite easy to see the difference between a genuine neon sign and one of the fluorescent ones. The real neon sign tubes are just glass tubes with no coating inside. When they're lit you can see a long red glowing tube of gas inside through the clear glass walls of the tube. Neon lights are used primarily as neon signs, although they are also used for decoration; some people put neon lights under their cars or use them as nightlights under the beds of children.
The very first neon sign used for advertising in the United States was introduced in Neon signs can contain as many colors as the designer wants, using a combination of straight gas, mixed gases and elements, colored glass tubing and fluorescent tubing. Each letter or element of the sign is made separately and kept sealed from the rest of the sign.
This allows many different colors to exist in one sign. When an electrical currant is applied to a neon light tube the atoms belonging to the gas are knocked out of their orbit.
The free electrons collide with each other and are sent back to the atoms. As the free electrons are absorbed by the atoms they produce energy.
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