why does the movement / acceleration of charged particles in space result in a phenomenon we call light?
In: Physics
Light come from electrons changing orbits on elements and compounds. Something excites an atom and an Electron changes orbits upwards to a higher shell. When the electron returns to its normal orbit, it emits the energy lost as light. This is why we see certain colors with specific elements. The electrons for that element when they shift down to their base shell state release energy, blue (cobalt), or red (iron), or green (copper).
Why it does this, it just happens that the frequency of the energy given off due to the electrons shifting down to their base shell matches these colors.
We can get the composition of a star, or any compounds by looking at it in a burning/fusing/light creating state through a spectrometer. That’s how we can tell that a star has some iron in it, we can see a line in red on the spectrum. We know a fire has some cobalt in it since we are getting some blue on the spectrometer.
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