this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2025
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[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

A single atom of gold is far too small for any photon in the visible spectrum to interact with.

A single atom of gold is 0.2 nanometres (a nanometre is an incredibly small thing and a gold atom isn't even half of 1% of that), meanwhile the wavelength of blue light (The smallest wavelength of visible light) is a hulking 380 nanometres. No matter how much you zoom in you would never see anything a single atom is just too small to interact with light.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago

A single atom of gold is far too small for any photon in the visible spectrum to interact with.

That's incorrect


single atoms can, and do, interact with optical photons.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.19671 https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms13716

And the entire field of super resolution microscopy relies on small things (e.g., molecules) interacting with light.