Excited Electrons and Visible Light Colors

When elements are heated to high temperatures, some of the electrons in the atoms absorb the heat energy

and jump to higher energy orbitals. We say they are excited. Eventually these

excited electrons lose their extra energy and fall back to lower energy orbitals.

The energy lost by the electron shoots out of the atom in small packages of light,

called photons. For metals, these photons have energies in the visible region of

the electromagnetic spectrum (400 - 700 nm), which means that humans can see it.

We can even tell one energy from another, by the color. Red light,

for example, is less energetic than orange or yellow and so on. In fact,