So what I’m reading is that these gas absorb the light from the sun and keeps it trapped on the earth.
What I don’t get is how is it letting the light and heat in from the sun in, but not the light and heat reflected from the Earth out? If it’s a barrier, shouldn’t it block both ways? If it’s not a barrier, how is it trapping the heat?
In: 950
The light that comes in is in the visible range. The light that goes out is in the infrared range. The greenhouse effect blocks infrared light.
When light energy hits something, some energy is absorbed and some is reflected. Since the reflected light lost some energy, its wavelength gets a bit longer. That’s why the hotter a stove gets, it goes from infrared light that you can’t see to red light and if it got hotter it would turn orange then yellow.
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