Category: sunlight

Why are tanning beds not good for you; also there are some new ones recently tha…

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Why are tanning beds not good for you; also there are some new ones recently that claim that they are safer than others (have no B rays)? Are they about the same as the sun itself or how much worse for you?

Tanning beds emit ultraviolet light in order to trigger your skin’s tanning response. This ultraviolet light can and does cause chemical damage to your skin. Like all light, ultraviolet light is absorbed and emitted as particles. The energy in each light particle depends on its wavelength and, since ultraviolet light has short wavelengths, ultraviolet light particles carry lots of energy. They carry enough energy to rearrange the molecules that absorb them. If those molecules are part of the genetic information of a cell, the cell may die or, worse yet, may become cancerous. The shorter the wavelength of the ultraviolet light, the more energetic its particles and the more damage it can do. Tanning beds walk a narrow line between inducing tanning and causing significant damage. Leather skin is one end result of too much chemical damage. Tanning beds that emit relatively long wavelength ultraviolet are probably less harmful than those that emit shorter wavelength ultraviolet (these wavelength ranges are sometimes designated by letters A, B, and C…I think that A is the longest wavelength and least harmful). Still, you skin’s tanning response is a defense against chemical damage and is probably not worth trying to trigger with light. Recent research seems to have found chemicals that trigger tanning. These chemicals mimic light-damaged molecules in your skin. Your skin senses these molecules and responds by tanning. If these chemicals work, you’ll soon be able to develop a true tan without exposure to light.

How do polarizing materials work?

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How do polarizing materials work?

The sheet polarizers that are used in sunglasses or in the demonstrations in class contain molecules that absorb electromagnetic waves of only one polarization. These molecules form long chains that interact with electromagnetic waves only when the electric fields push charge along the lengths of the molecules. In the polarizing sheets, the molecules are all oriented along the same direction so that they all absorb light of the same polarization. The other polarization of light passes through the sheets virtually unscathed. When unpolarized (randomly polarized) light enters one of these sheets, any waves that are polarized along the molecules are absorbed while any that are polarized across the molecules are permitted to pass. About half the light makes it through and that half is polarized across the molecules. If this remaining light is sent through a second polarizing sheet, turned 90° so that the molecules of the second sheet are aligned with the polarization of the light leaving the first sheet, then the remaining light will be absorbed in the second sheet and essentially no light will emerge from the pair of sheets. This arrangement, two polarizers turn 90° with respect to one another, is called “crossed polarizers”. It is a useful arrangement for observing materials that rotate polarization by distorting the electric and magnetic fields. If a distorting material is placed between the two crossed polarizers, light from the first polarizer may be altered by the material and thus be able to pass through the second polarizer.

Why are there sunspots?

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Why are there sunspots?

The sun is a ball of incandescent gas. That gas moves about, flowing up and down as well as across the sun’s surface. This movement keeps the sun’s temperature roughly uniform but there are occasionally imperfections; regions of the sun’s surface that get out of balance with the rest of the sun. When you cook a thick soup on the stove, there will also be regions of the surface that are cooler than others.

How do shadows form?

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How do shadows form?

Light from the sun travels in straight lines (apart from some wave effects called diffraction, that are unimportant in this case). As sunlight passes objects, those objects absorb or scatter the sunlight, leaving regions of space that no longer contain any electromagnetic waves. Regions of space behind the objects contain no sunlight and do not appear illuminated. We perceive those dark, unilluminated regions as shadows.

Why can water appear brown, blue (as in the ocean), and clear (as in a glass of …

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Why can water appear brown, blue (as in the ocean), and clear (as in a glass of water)?

Brown water contains colored contaminants that provide the color. Brown is the typical end result for a random mixture of pigments. The blue ocean is caused mostly by the sky. Since the ocean reflects some of the light from the sky, it appears blue. Pure water is almost completely colorless. Thus a glass of water has no color (unless you illuminate it with colored light). But if you look at a white light through many meters of water, that light will become slightly colored. Water absorbs a very small amount of visible light and you will see only what is not absorbed. I’m not sure what color pure water has. It may appear slightly green.

How do window tints (for your car windows) work? Are they just polarized materia…

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How do window tints (for your car windows) work? Are they just polarized materials?

Some of them may be polarized materials, blocking horizontally polarized light, but most are simply absorbing materials that are embedded directly in the glass during its manufacture. Chemically tinted glass just darkens the sky be absorbing some of the light passing through the glass, regardless of polarization. It’s not possible to chemically treat the glass to make it absorb only one polarization of light because that treatment would have to carefully align its molecules. In the plastic polarizing sheets, there is an alignment process (usually stretching in one direction) that lines up all the absorbing molecules.

Why do dark clothes absorb heat more than light clothes?

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Why do dark clothes absorb heat more than light clothes?

Dark fabrics or surfaces are very good at absorbing and emitting light. That is why they are dark. They must contain electric charges that move fairly easily (making them good antennas) and these charges must be good at exchanging energy with the surrounding material as heat. When light strikes these charges, the charges begin to move and absorb the light’s energy. This energy flows into the material as heat. Since the light is absorbed, the material appears dark (no light is reflected back toward you). But the material will also emit light very effectively when hot. If you heat a black object up, heat will flow into the charges, which will begin to move and will emit light. Thus black objects are good at both absorbing and emitting light.

How does light cancel in destructive interference?

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How does light cancel in destructive interference?

When two identical waves (usually two halves of the same wave) arrive together out of phase, the electric field in one wave (or half-wave) is up at the same moment that the electric field of the other wave (or half-wave) is down. These two electric fields add together and create a total electric field that is neither up nor down. An electric charge at this location in space will experience no forces so there is no electric field (one wave pushes that charge up while the other wave pushes that charge down). With no electric field around, there is no light to be absorbed. If two waves coming toward you interfere destructively, you will see no light. You might worry about conservation of energy; where did the light and its energy go? It went somewhere else. Any time there is destructive interference at one point in space, there will always be some other point in space at which there is constructive interference. Thus when you look at a soap film and see no red light, you can be sure that the red light has gone somewhere else. In the case of the soap film, when you see no red light in the reflection from the film, that red light has been transmitted by the film and is visible on the opposite side of the film.

Why do different sunglasses appear darker than others?

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Why do different sunglasses appear darker than others?

Polarizing sunglasses block half the light (stopping horizontally polarized light and passing only vertically polarized light). But sunglasses of all types contain chemicals that absorb light of both polarizations. The darkness of the sunglasses depends on which chemicals are used and how much of those chemicals they contain. Some sunglasses are also coated with thin metallic layers that reflect a fraction of the light that strikes them. These semi-transparent mirrors can change the transmission of the sunglasses dramatically so that those sunglasses may transmit 50% of the light or 0.01% of the light. The manufacturer can choose.

How does light create heat?

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How does light create heat?

Actually, some light is heat. Heat is the energy that flows from one object to another because of a difference in their temperatures. The sun is hotter than you are so that it sends heat toward you. Sunlight is heat; it is the sun’s heat being sent toward you as electromagnetic radiation. When it strikes the surface of your skin, this radiation is absorbed and becomes the more familiar form of heat: kinetic and potential energy in the atoms and molecules. From the surface of your skin, this heat flows inward to warm the rest of your body. Any material that absorbs light usually converts it to heat. The charged particles in that material move under the influence of the light’s electric field and these moving charged particles transfer their energy here and there as heat.