Black body
In
physics, a black body is an object that absorbs all
electromagnetic radiation that falls onto it. No radiation passes through it and none is reflected, yet it theoretically radiates every possible wavelength of energy. Despite the name, black bodies are not actually black as they radiate energy as well. The amount and type of electromagnetic radiation they emit is directly related to their temperature. Black bodies below around 700 K produce very little radiation at visible wavelengths and appear black . Black bodies above this temperature, however, begin to produce radiation at visible wavelengths starting at red, going through orange, yellow, and white before ending up at blue as the temperature increases.
Encyclopedia
In
physics, a
black body is an object that absorbs all
electromagnetic radiation that falls onto it. No radiation passes through it and none is reflected, yet it theoretically radiates every possible wavelength of energy. Despite the name, black bodies are not actually black as they radiate energy as well. The amount and type of electromagnetic radiation they emit is directly related to their temperature. Black bodies below around 700 K produce very little radiation at visible wavelengths and appear black . Black bodies above this temperature, however, begin to produce radiation at visible wavelengths starting at red, going through orange, yellow, and white before ending up at blue as the temperature increases.
The term "black body" was introduced by
Gustav Kirchhoff in 1862. The light emitted by a black body is called
black-body radiation.
Explanation
In the laboratory, the closest thing to black-body radiation is the radiation from a small hole entrance to a larger cavity. Any light entering the hole would have to reflect off the walls of the cavity multiple times before it escaped and is almost certain to be absorbed by the walls in the process, regardless of what they are made of or the
wavelength of the radiation . The hole, then, is a close approximation of a theoretical black body and, if the cavity is heated, the
spectrum of the hole's radiation will be continuous, and will not depend on the material in the cavity . By a theorem proved by Kirchhoff, this curve depends
only on the temperature of the cavity walls.
Calculating this curve was a major challenge in theoretical physics during the late nineteenth century. The problem was finally solved in 1900 by
Max Planck as
Planck's law of black-body radiation. By making changes to Wien's Radiation Law consistent with
Thermodynamics and Electromagnetism, he found a mathematical formula fitting the experimental data in a satisfactory way. To find a physical interpretation for this formula, Planck had then to assume that the energy of the oscillators in the cavity was quantized .
Einstein built on this idea and proposed the quantization of electromagnetic radiation itself in 1905 to explain the
photoelectric effect. These theoretical advances eventually resulted in the superseding of classical electromagnetism by
quantum electrodynamics. Today, these quanta are called
photons. In addition, it led to the development of quantum versions of statistical mechanics, called
Fermi-Dirac statistics and Bose-Einstein statistics, each applicable to a different class of particles.
See also fermions
and bosons.
The wavelength at which the radiation is strongest is given by
Wien's displacement law, and the overall power emitted per unit area is given by the Stefan-Boltzmann law. So, as temperature increases, the glow color changes from red to yellow to white to blue. Even as the peak wavelength moves into the ultra-violet enough radiation continues to be emitted in the blue wavelengths that the body will continue to appear blue. It will never become invisible—indeed, the radiation of visible light increases monotonically with temperature.
The radiance or observed intensity is not a function of direction. Therefore a black body is a perfect
Lambertian radiator.
Real objects never behave as full-ideal black bodies, and instead the emitted radiation at a given frequency is a fraction of what the ideal emission would be. The emissivity of a material specifies how well a real body radiates energy as compared with a black body. This emissivity depends on factors such as temperature, emission angle, and wavelength. However, it is typical in engineering to assume that a surface's spectral emissivity and absorptivity do not depend on wavelength, so that the emissivity is a constant. This is known as the
grey body assumption.
Interestingly, this means that every object around you is emitting electromagnetic waves with wavelengths of all values. Every object in the universe has heat, even the emptiness of space, and when the particles that make up an object vibrate on a microscopic level they radiate electromagnetic waves. These wavelengths are predominantly
infrared , but there is also a minute amount of visible light like red, yellow, green and blue. So, right now, you and everything around you is emitting visible light. The reason this light cannot be seen is that it has a very low intensity so it is overpowered by the light that is reflected by the object.
When dealing with non-black surfaces, the deviations from ideal black body behavior are determined by both the geometrical structure and the chemical composition, and follow Kirchhoff's Law: emissivity equals absorptivity, so that an object that does not absorb all incident light will also emit less radiation than an ideal black body.
In
astronomy, objects such as
stars are frequently regarded as black bodies, though this is often a poor approximation. An almost perfect black-body spectrum is exhibited by the
cosmic microwave background radiation. Hawking radiation is black-body radiation emitted by
black holes.
Equations governing black bodies
Planck's law of black-body radiation
where
...
.
Wien's displacement law
The relationship between the temperature T of a black body, and wavelength at which the intensity of the radiation it produces is at a maximum is
The nanometer is a convenient unit of measure for optical wavelengths. Note that 1 nanometer is equivalent to 10−9 meters.
Stefan-Boltzmann law
The total energy radiated per unit area per unit time by a black body is related to its temperature T and the Stefan-Boltzmann constant as follows:
Radiation emitted by a human
Black-body laws can be applied to many things. For example, A great deal of a person's energy is radiated away in the form of electromagnetic radiation - of which, most is infrared.
The net power of energy radiated away is the difference between what someone absorbs from their surroundings and what they radiate themselves:
Plugging in the Stefan-Boltzmann law:
The above equation is applicable to any object which behaves similar to a black body. People have an area of about 2 square meters, and emissivity of nearly 1. They also have a skin temperature of about 32 °C . But clothing reduces the surface temperature a few degrees, so in addition to reducing heat loss through conduction, it reduces loss of heat by radiation. So for surface temperature of people we should use 301 K. The temperature of the surrounding environment varies, but for a rough order of magnitude answer, one can use 20 °C . Plugging in these values results in a net rate emission of energy for people of about:
In this scenario, people are roughly 100 watt light bulbs, except they emit all infrared and longer wavelength light. The amount of energy in a whole day turns out to be almost 9 million joules, or 2,000 calories. Normal rate of metabolism is typically 100-120 watts, and a person losing more than 160 watts would feel cold and need to increase activity or cover with clothes. In contrast, during physical activity the metabolism is much higher and since the emission is not large enough, the excess heat is carried by sweating.
Also, applying Wien's Law to humans, one finds that the peak wavelength of light emitted by a person is:
This, presumably, would be the wavelength that infrared goggles would be designed to be most sensitive to.
Temperature relation between a planet and its star
Here is an application of black-body laws. It is a rough derivation that gives an order of magnitude answer. See p. 380-382 of Planetary Science, for further discussion.
Assumptions
The surface temperature of a planet depends on a few factors:
For the inner planets, incident radiation has the most significant impact on surface temperature. This derivation is concerned mainly with that.
If we assume the following:
- The Sun and the Earth both radiate as spherical black bodies in thermal equilibrium with themselves.
- The Earth absorbs all the solar energy that it intercepts from the Sun.
then we can derive a formula for the relationship between the Earth's surface temperature and the Sun's surface temperature.
Derivation
To begin, we use the Stefan-Boltzmann law to find the total power the Sun is emitting:
- where
- is the Stefan-boltzmann constant,
- is the surface temperature of the Sun, and
- is the radius of the Sun.
The Sun emits that power equally in all directions. Because of this, the Earth is hit with only a tiny fraction of it. This is the power from the Sun that the Earth absorbs:
- where
- is the radius of the Earth and
- is the distance between the Sun and the Earth.
Even though the earth only absorbs as a circular area , it emits equally in all directions as a sphere:
- where is the surface temperature of the earth.
Now, in the first assumption the earth is in thermal equilibrium, so the power absorbed must equal the power emitted:
- So plug in equations 1, 2, and 3 into this and we get
Many factors cancel from both sides and this equation can be greatly simplified.
The result
After canceling of factors, the final result is
| |
| where |
| is the surface temperature of the Sun, |
| is the radius of the Sun, |
| is the distance between the Sun and the Earth, and |
| is the average surface temperature of the Earth. |
In other words, the temperature of the Earth only depends on the surface temperature of the Sun, the radius of the Sun, and the distance between the Earth and the Sun.
Temperature of the Sun
If we plug in the measured values for Earth,
we'll find the surface temperature of the Sun to be
This is within three percent of the standard measure of 5780 kelvins which makes the formula valid for most scientific and engineering applications.
A few historical examples of black body radiation
Blast furnaces before 1700 heated with charcoal could only produce "red hot" pig iron. The introduction of coke for heating in English ironworks in 1709 enabled "yellow hot" iron, required for the more advanced products of the industrial revolution.
See also
Footnotes
References
- Planck, Max, "". Annalen der Physik, vol. 4, p. 553 ff .
External links
