Omnimaga
General Discussion => Other Discussions => Math and Science => Topic started by: Hot_Dog on October 01, 2010, 07:49:33 pm
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If infrared light allows beings to see "heat," what does ultraviolet light allow one to see?
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Dunno, but apparently bees can see it.
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The reason seeing infrared allows us to *see* heat is not because heat gives off infrared light, its because heat *is* infrared light :)
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I don't remember a lot from the optics section in Physics but isn't it basically that you certain lights only reveal other things at that same frequency or wavelength? Or something like that.
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Im no expert in the area of color reflection, all i know is that infrared radiation is what we feel as heat ^^
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I don't remember a lot from the optics section in Physics but isn't it basically that you certain lights only reveal other things at that same frequency or wavelength? Or something like that.
Yeah, so basically, what we see is what we can understand from the light that bounces off objects into our eyes. Each object can only reflect certain wavelengths of light. This is how we tell the difference between them in terms of color. If we were able to see ultraviolet, it would basically become another color in the spectrum that some things reflect and some do not. The same thing would happen with infrared if our eyes were really able to see it.
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Well technically ultraviolet and infrared are colors in the spectrum, we just can't see them without artificial help, I believe.
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Well, to human beings they're not in our visible spectrum. It's like a color wheel, where violet fades into red just fine. If ultraviolet and infrared were added, they'd fade into each other strangely well, and red and violet would be pretty far off.
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Purple doesn't exist :D It is your brain warping violet and red light together to make what we see as purple. There is actualy no wavelength for purple light, its all in your head :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_color
This stems from the fact that our brain can only see green, red, and blue, everything else it just makes up. It assumes that when it sees green and yellow together, that it is seeing yellow. Same thing for cyan. But red and blue? Hmmm they are on opposite sides... Oh well they make purple :D
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Well, to human beings they're not in our visible spectrum. It's like a color wheel, where violet fades into red just fine. If ultraviolet and infrared were added, they'd fade into each other strangely well, and red and purple would be pretty far off.
Ya, I know. I'm just saying they technically are colors, we just can't see them naturally.
@Builder
Ya, optics is odd :P
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Infrared is only "Heat" becasue our environment is about 300 Kelvin and at this temperature we release the most amount of blackbody radiation at this wavelength. You are emitting as much radiation as you are absorbing because everything around you is about the same temperature. If you heat something up hot enough, say to 2000K, it starts to emit much of its radiation in the form of visible light which is why a glowing iron rod appears red after being heated. And if you go into space, you have a temperature of about 2.7K which is due to the cosmic microwave background radiation.
So the actual wavelength is only dependent on temperature. Its only infrared at room temperature.
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Purple doesn't exist :D It is your brain warping violet and red light together to make what we see as purple. There is actualy no wavelength for purple light, its all in your head :)
Whoops, I said "violet" the first time, but I used "purple" the second for some reason :P Slip of the keyboard, edited :)
Infrared is only "Heat" becasue our environment is about 300 Kelvin and at this temperature we release the most amount of blackbody radiation at this wavelength. You are emitting as much radiation as you are absorbing because everything around you is about the same temperature. If you heat something up hot enough, say to 2000K, it starts to emit much of its radiation in the form of visible light which is why a glowing iron rod appears red after being heated. And if you go into space, you have a temperature of about 2.7K which is due to the cosmic microwave background radiation.
So the actual wavelength is only dependent on temperature. Its only infrared at room temperature.
Nice to know! Thanks!
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Ya, sweet to know!
Does anyone know if we actually helped or answered Hot_Dog's question? :P
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Dunno, the first useful answer came five days late...
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Seeing Ultraviolet light lets you see Ultraviolet light ;)
As for what physical systems are revealed by UV wavelengths, it just so happens that right after the transition into UV, the photons become energetic enough for single photon induced electronic transitions to occur in many substances. In other words, you get fluorescence and ionization in the UV range and above. That's why UV can be used to make blacklights and kill bacteria. Seeing UV would be just like seeing in color, except that you would see less due to the lower natural abundance of UV wavelengths. The visible spectrum is the range of the most prevalent wavelengths in the atmosphere above the UHF range. You can thank Evolution for that.
Kind of a bit late though :P