Chapter 6

Radiant Energy

You can tell that light carries energy, because it takes energy to produce light, and
also because sufficiently intense light striking an object will warm it noticeably.
Although there is no well-known term for the type of energy carried by light, some
scientists call it radiant energy, because of the way that light radiates outward
from a source like a lightbulb or the sun.
What is light? We call it an “electromagnetic wave,” made of electric and
magnetic “fields” that propagate along very quickly, even through empty space.
This is hardly an explanation of what light actually is, but the key point for our
purposes is that light behaves like a wave. This behavior can be demonstrated by
aiming a beam of light at a narrow hole and watching it spread out on the other
side, just as water waves passing through a gap in a barrier will spread out on the
other side. From the amount of spreading you can determine the wavelength of
light, that is, the distance from one wave crest to the next as you move along the
beam. This wavelength turns out to be extremely tiny: about half a millionth of a
meter (0.5 µm, where µ, the Greek letter mu, stands for micro). The wavelength of
red light is somewhat longer than this (0.6 to 0.7 µm), violet light somewhat shorter
(0.4 µm), and other colors in between, in the order of the rainbow. A reasonably
uniform mixture of all the the colors of the rainbow appears white to our eyes.
It’s also possible to create “light” with wavelengths longer than that of red, or
shorter than that of violet. The longer wavelengths are called infrared, while the
shorter ones are called ultraviolet. Our eyes are unable to see these “colors,” but
they’re perfectly real: they can be detected by certain types of film or electronic
cameras, and they most definitely carry energy. Beyond the infrared, at wavelengths
above a millimeter, are what we call microwaves and radio waves, while at very
short wavelengths are x-rays and gamma rays. The whole range of wavelengths
from radio waves down to gamma rays is called the electromagnetic spectrum.
It’s somewhat similar to the continuum of possible musical pitches, like the notes
on a piano but including every possible intermediate pitch as well as pitches that
extend far above and far below the audible range. Figure 6.1 shows all these portions
of the electromagnetic spectrum, in order by wavelength.
Some sources of electromagnetic waves emit only a very narrow range of wave-
lengths, while others emit a broad range of wavelengths. In the first category are
radio broadcasting antennas, magnetrons in microwave ovens, light-emitting diodes
(LED’s), lasers, and sodium-vapor street lights. In the second category are in-
candescent lights, the sun, and objects at room temperature (which emit mostly
infrared wavelengths). To visualize the mixture of wavelengths emitted by a par-
ticular source, we often draw a graph of brightness vs. wavelength.

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Wavelength in meters
10−12 10−11 10−10 10−9 10−8 10−7 10−6 10−5 10−4 10−3 .01 0.1 1 10 100 1000

Gamma X-rays Ultraviolet Infrared Microwaves Radio waves

Visible
rays

Figure 6.1. The most important portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. On

this graph, each horizontal unit represents a range of wavelengths that is ten times
the size of the previous horizontal unit. Note that the visible-light portion of the
spectrum covers only a tiny range, from about 0.4 µm (violet) to 0.7µm (red).

Figure 6.2 shows graphs (somewhat simplified) of brightness vs. wavelength for
two familiar light sources: the sun, and a typical incandescent light bulb. Notice
that the sun’s light is brightest in the visible range, but also contains a great deal
of infrared as well as some ultraviolet. The incandescent bulb, on the other hand,
is brightest in the infrared, with only a relatively small fraction of its light in the
visible range and almost no ultraviolet. Furthermore, whereas sunlight contains a
relatively uniform mixture of the colors of the visible rainbow, incandescent light
contains much more red than blue or violet. This is why incandescent light has that
familiar “warm,” orangish color, and why photographs taken under incandescent
light often appear to have an orange tint to them.

6000 K (sun)
Brightness

3000 K (incandescent bulb)

0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3

Wavelength in microns

Figure 6.2. Graphs of the spectra from two “thermal” sources, one at 6000 K
(such as the sun) and the other at 3000 K (such as an incandescent lightbulb). The
horizontal axis is calibrated in units of one micron (µm), which is 10−6 meter. The
vertical axis indicates relative brightness, with the two sources assumed to have the
same total brightness. The visible colors lie in the approximate range 0.4 µm to
0.7 µm, indicated by the gray shading.

Ironically, the reason why incandescent light has this mix of colors skewed toward
the red is because its source, the filament of the bulb, is cooler than the sun. The
 Chapter 6 Radiant Energy 3

temperature of an incandescent filament is normally around 2700 degrees Celsius,

or 3000 kelvin, where the kelvin temperature scale is similar to Celsius but
is measured with respect to absolute zero (−273◦ C) instead of the freezing point
of water. Thus, kelvin temperatures are always 273 degrees higher than Celsius
temperatures, and for sufficiently hot objects we can just round this number to 300.
The nice thing about using the kelvin temperature scale is that it gives meaning to
the concept of one object being twice as hot as another, or ten times as hot, and so
on. The sun’s surface, at about 6000 K, is roughly twice as hot as the filament of a
light bulb, whereas room temperature, 300 K, is ten times colder than the filament.
Now look again at the graphs in Figure 6.2. Both of these spectra have basically
the same shape, with an abrupt rise at shorter wavelengths and a gradual decline
at longer wavelengths. This is because any object at a well-defined temperature
emits light with a spectrum of this shape. (There is a mathematical formula for
the shape of the graph, but it’s not important for our purposes.) The light emitted
by any object at a well-defined temperature is called thermal radiation, and
in some sense can be considered a type of thermal energy. As far as the light is
concerned, the only difference between one source of thermal radiation and another
is the temperature of the source: hotter objects tend to emit more of the shorter
wavelengths, while cooler objects tend to emit more of the longer wavelengths. More
precisely, the wavelength at which the spectrum peaks is inversely proportional to
the temperature of the source (measured on the kelvin scale). For example, the
spectrum of the light bulb peaks at a wavelength twice as large as that of the sun,
because the filament is only half as hot as the sun. The spectrum of an object at
room temperature (300 K) peaks at a wavelength ten times higher still, because
room temperature is only 1/10 as hot as the filament. This is why objects at room
temperature emit essentially no visible light—just infrared.
The spectrum graph for a laser or some other monochromatic (“one-color”)
light source (such as an LED or a laser) would look very different: zero at almost all
wavelengths, with a high, sharp spike at the wavelength of the source. A fluorescent
light bulb is like a mixture of a small number of monochromatic sources, with the
precise mixture depending on the type of coating used on the fluorescent tube.
Because the human eye has only three types of color sensors, it is possible to use
three (or more) different monochromatic sources to produce light that the human
eye perceives as “white,” as if it were a mixture of all of the infinite colors of the
rainbow.
Exercise 6.1. Given that light carries energy, and energy cannot be destroyed, why
doesn’t a room continue to become brighter and brighter and brighter, the longer
you leave on the light? Explain carefully.
Exercise 6.2. Looking at the spectrum of an incandescent light bulb in Figure 6.2,
explain why incandescent lights are considered to be very “inefficient.”
Exercise 6.3. True or false: In a building that is being heated by electricity, there
is no point in turning out lights to save electricity. (Please explain your answer.)