It seems like other electromagnetic waves have some special properties. Microwave can heat the water molecules, infrared is basically “heat waves”. UV have enough energy to damage DNA and harm a living things. X-rays and Gamma radiation can penetrate a lot of material and also damage DNA. But the visible part is just visible, or it have some other properties?
In: Physics
Those properties are not intrinsic to that type of wave though, not really. They are properties that result because of how EM radiation with that particular wavelength is likely to interact with various types of matter, resulting in either absorption, reflection, or just passing straight through.
It is not true for example that visible light is visible and infrared light is ‘heat waves’. It’s just that infrared refers to the range of wavelengths in which most objects which are radiating heat are radiating their heat. Visible light also carries energy and will heat things up when it is absorbed. Heating water molecules similarly isn’t really a property of microwaves per se, it’s rather that EM radiation with a wavelength in the microwave range happens to be just the right wavelength to cause polar molecules to oscillate back and forth.
To some extent this is the case because there aren’t really different types of EM radiation. There’s one type, that can have a range of wavelengths, and we give different names to ranges of those wavelengths based in part on how that wavelength interacts with matter
Latest Answers