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.
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.
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.