So, if we take fire, how come not all of the energy is released as light, why is some of it released as heat as well as light?
In: Physics
Radiation/light is a spectrum, and all that differs is wavelength and frequency. It ranges from gamma rays that have a high frequency, small wavelength to radio waves which have a long wavelength, low frequency. Visible light is somewhere in the middle which we can see. Infrared light is slightly lower frequency than visible light, so we can’t see it but we can feel it as heat. This is how those night vision goggles in movies work. The reason some energy from a fire is heat and some is visible is because energy is released from electrons in certain discrete packets of energy based on which elements are burning/how hot. That’s why some fires are red but hotter fires are blue. That’s also why fires don’t emit a lot of UV rays that sunburn you, but the sun, which burns waaay hotter, does. All this I learned in college physics and find it really interesting
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