I’m researching for a project about greenhouse gasses and I can’t find an answer on why this is. Please explain!!
In: Physics
Heat is not a thing by itself. Heat is the transfer of energy in a thermodynamic system. An object can emit or absorb IR and UV radiation. So IR and UV can transfer heat but are not heat b themself.
If an object is hit by electromagnetic radiation and absorbed it you will heat it up, that is regardless if it is UV, Visible light, IR, or other frequency ranges like microwave, radios waves, X-ray, or Gamma ray.
One way to transfer heat it through radiation. All objects emit thermal radiation that is electromagnetic radiation, the frequency range, and the amount of radiation at each frequency depends on the temperature.
Infrared light slower energy per photon than visible light and ultra-violent has higher. Higher energy photons require higher object temperature
Stuff that is at the normal surface temperature of the earth only emits IR light.
To emit visible light they need to be 525 °C, 977 °F, 798K that humans can see as a glow . So if you heat up metals, rocks like lava, or something else that is when they start to emit visible light.
At some point, they start to emit UV light too and the sun at 5,778 K (5,505 °C, 9,941 °F) do emit a lot of UV. The temperature required is not common on earth but it reached when you use welding equipment especially eclectic arch welding.
Humans often call IR radiation for heat but that is only because feeling how it heat up our skin is the only way we can detect it without instruments. Visible light heat you up the same way but we can see it.
The result is if an object is hot enough it does emit UV light like the sun but at a lower temperature, no visible or UV light will be emitted.
Greenhouse gases are the one that is good at absorbing the light frequencies that earth emmit but transparent the main frequencies the sun emits.
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