wire
I'm fairly new to electronics here. But I can't seem to find any clear answer anywhere on the internet.
Are wires special depending on their color? Or they have all the same purpose with just colors to define them so people won't get confused? Say I wanted to reverse the black and red wires on a LED strip connected to a battery, would it still function properly or not?
Just been curious about it lately..
Red is for Right. Blue (or green) is for Left. Copper is for ground (I remember this with the mnemonic Red Right bLue Left Copper Common). All 3 are coated in a lacquer you need to burn or scrape off before you solder. With standard headphone plugs, with the plug facing away from you, the right pin is right, the center pin is ground, and the left pin is left.
Obligatory link to the XKCD comic about standards:
So yeah, there are standards. There are so many of them that it's effectively the same as having no standard, as every possible wire arrangement likely has a standard that describes it.
Best Answer
The colors do not matter electrically. A wire is a wire is a wire, regardless of the color of their insulation. The color of the wire itself may matter when you get into higher voltages, but that's about the type of metal used (aluminum vs copper conductivity, for example).
The colors may matter, for readability, adhering to standards, legal compliance. But that normally doesn't apply to individual projects. You can use red for ground and black for power, just be aware that someone may see it and be confused. The led strip doesn't care about the color, but it will when someone thinks well, red is positive and black is ground so let me connect it the right way and something breaks when they connect it to the power source.