Category: sunlight

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.

How does suntan lotion work to prevent ultraviolet rays from damaging your skin?

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How does suntan lotion work to prevent ultraviolet rays from damaging your skin?

Suntan lotion (or rather sunscreen) is a chemical whose molecules absorb ultraviolet light and turn its energy into heat. Like fluorescent compounds, these molecules absorb ultraviolet light strongly. But unlike fluorescent compounds, the sunscreen molecules do not reemit any light. They convert all of the ultraviolet light energy into heat, which does no damage to your skin.

Why do sunspots affect radio and TV reception?

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Why do sunspots affect radio and TV reception?

Although I do not really know very much about the connection between sunspots and radio reception, I believe that the problem lies in with the solar wind. The solar wind is a steady stream of electrically charged particles that is responsible for the aurora, among other things. Since charged particles that interact with the earth’s magnetic field accelerate, they emit radio waves. These waves should cause reception problems on earth. If anyone reading this knows otherwise or has more information, please let me know.

If white color has a reflection close to one, what role does shininess or dullne…

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If white color has a reflection close to one, what role does shininess or dullness play?

Just because two materials both reflect all of the light that strikes them doesn’t mean that they look the same. When you send a flashlight beam at a white surface, you can see that reflected light from all directions. When you send the flashlight beam at a mirror surface, you can only see the reflected light from one particular angle. Both the white surface and the mirror surface reflect virtually all of the light that hits them. A shiny white surface is different from a dull white surface because a shiny white surface has a small amount of mirror character to it: you can see the whiteness from any direction but there is also a mirror aspect that you can only see from certain angles.