You're right (sort of

) - I should have been more specific.
Colour Channels are greyscale information about how much of a particular colour is present. If the image is RGB, there are 3 channels which in this way define how much colour information is present for each pixel for Red, Green and Blue respectively.
If the image is CMYK, there are 4 channels - Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black (Key).
So in this respect we're both right, they are greyscale, but the greyscale tones represent the amount of each colour present for a particular pixel. Photoshop allows you to see these channels in greyscale or colour - as defined in your preferences - it defaults to greyscale, as 98% transparent yellow is hard to see
Alpha channels are different but work in a similar way. In this case, as mikeandike22 pointed out, they are purely greyscale, and can be used to define a selection where the different grades of grey define transparency.
Hope this clears things up a bit.