blackbody
esiegel | June 12, 2013"Twinkle, twinkle, quasi-star
Biggest puzzle from afar
How unlike the other ones
Brighter than a billion suns
Twinkle, twinkle, quasi-star
How I wonder what you are." -George Gamow
The Big Bang is one of the greatest, revolutionary ideas in all of modern science, but it's also one of the most successful ideas as far as making predictions that have aligned with our observations of the Universe. Despite all of that, there are a whole bunch of people who'll read this (and more who won't) who aren't sure that the Big Bang is correct. Some people, in fact, don't even understand the definition of…
esiegel | October 7, 2012"As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being." -Carl Jung
During the daytime, light is plentiful and abundant, and the majority of our waking lives are optimized for that. But more and more of us are active late into the dark hours, when -- as Owen Pallett (formerly Final Fantasy) would tell us -- the last of
Your Light is Spent.
Unfortunately for us, our bodies are accustomed to certain types of light during the day, and expect a different type of night at light.
Image credit: TableTop Studio Ltd or LLC.
Because there's a…
esiegel | August 14, 2012"The colors of a rainbow so pretty in the sky.
Are also on the faces of people going by." -Louis Armstrong
It's no secret that white light is the light that we see when all the colors shine together and are seen at once. This has been known for over 400 years, when Isaac Newton demonstrated that white light could be broken up into all the known colors by dispersing it through a prism.
Image credit: Adam Hart-Davis.
All that we're doing is breaking white light -- in this case, sunlight -- up into all of its component colors. This can be done artificially (such as by configuring a prism) or…
rallain | April 21, 2009I am not sure if First Excited State posted this as a blog entry, but it was mentioned on twitter. Question: why are sparks blue? My first gut response was that this is the blackbody color. Wrong for several reasons. The short answer is that sparks are blue because of the colors given off from nitrogen and oxygen when they are excited.
In order to make this post longer than necessary, let me say something about blackbodies. A blackbody is an object that emits radiation due only to it's temperature. Since it does not reflect anything, it looks black at room temperatures. You can make a…