How do gemstones get their color?
Chemistry For Your Life
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The Importance of Color in Transition Metals
In gemstones, the colorless ones, they don't have that exact right wavelength. So nothing in them can absorb the light in the visible region. We just don't know. They may be absorbing it in other regions. And my analogy is like on rungs of a ladder, how it has to be just like just exactly. You can't miss the rung. If you want to keep climbing up and the same thing is true when you absorb light - their light has to get you right up to that level.
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