What Can We Learn from the Electromagnetic Spectrum?
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GENERAL I ARTICLE What can we Learn from the Electromagnetic Spectrum? A W Joshi and A 10k Kumar Electromagnetic radiation is all around us, and essential for A W Joshi was at the the survival of alllifeforms. It provides valuable informa Department of Physics, University of Pune, Pune. tion about the physical world around us, feeds us by provid ing energy to plants, allows us to maintain human metabo Alok Kumar is at the lism, and cures us of various diseases. This article deals Department of Physics, with the various properties of electromagnetic radiation, its State University of New sources and detectors, its nature, and its uses. A brief York, USA. discussion on the absorption spectrum of the Earth's atmo sphere and the atmospheric windows, and celestial objects seen through optical and radio telescopes is also provided. Introduction Our perception of the physical world around us is largely based on our interaction with the range of the electromagnetic radia tion (EMR) that is called visible light. Most objects scatter visible light that enters through the irises of our eyes, falls on our retina, interacts with the retinal pigment that eventually causes an electrical pulse that is transmitted to our brain through optic nerves. We feel warm in front of a fire partly because of a type of electromagnetic radiation that is called infrared radiation. Simi larly; our skin gets tanned when exposed to sunlight because of certain electromagnetic radiation called ultraviolet. However, we cannot· see, feel, or detect X-rays using our sense organs. This radiation does penetrate and affect our body. What is the elec tromagnetic radiation? What are the various ways it affects our lives? How can we produce different kinds of electromagnetic radiation? This article will provide answers to these questions. Keywords A Brief History Electromagnetic radiation, electromagnetic spectrum, at Hans Christian Oersted (1777-1851), during a class demonstra mospheric windows. tion in 1819, noticed that a compass needle near a wire experi- --------~--------8 RESONANCE I March 2003 GENERAL I ARTICLE enced deflection when current passed through the wire. Later, in 1821, Michael Faraday (1791-1867) observed current in a coil "'\ // when a magnet was moved in the direction or away from the coil ~¥G.~\ /.//\ \. J) , that was connected to a galvanometer (Figure 1). If the magnet ~\ , \..3 \ ! was held stationary near the coil, no current in the coil was ~\ observed. Faraday speculated that the changing magnetic field /_~~1 \ in a coil generated a current in the coil. This phenomenon was .. -::= :.::::1.. t ~-:."j / later called electromagnetic induction. This connected the fields of ~ / ; \"-/ electricity and magnetism. ~/ \ / \ James Clark Maxwell (1831-1879), a Scottish physicist, pro ! \ \, vided a mathematical form to Faraday's speculations and gave ;/ / \. four equations that are popularly known as Maxwell equations. I \ Maxwell hypothesized that since a changing magnetic field Figure 1. Electromagnetic produces an electric field, a changing electric field should simi induction of current in a larly produce a magnetic field. He also predicted that oscilla coil. tions of an electric charge produce an electromagnetic field that radiates outward at a constant speed. He theoretically calculated this speed to be 300,000 kilometre per second - a speed that can allow an electromagnetic wave to move around the Earth about 7.5 times in one second. Maxwell predicted a very long range of wavelengths for this radiation - an impressive feat without much experimentation. The experimental generation and detection of the electromag netic waves came later in 1884 when Heinrich Rudolf Hertz (1857-1894), a German physicist, used an electrical circuit with oscillating electric field. Today, a fairly large range for the electromagnetic radiation that covers from radiowaves, micro waves, infrared, visible, ultraviolet, X-rays, to y-rays are ob served. Marchese Guglielmo Marconi (1874-1937), an Italian physicist, found a practical use of electromagnetic waves for communica tion. He used these waves, later called radio waves, for communi cation between two cities across the Atlantic Ocean. The high speed of these waves came very handy for long distance commu nication. This system was first patented in 1896 and Marconi --------~--------9 RESONANCE I March 2003 GENERAL I ARTICLE Figure 2. The spread of the electromagnetic spectrum and its seven parts, along with photon energy and wavelength. shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1909 with Carl Ferdinand Braun for developing wireless telegraphy. Recently, a contro versy is evolving which indicates that J C Bose of India was perhaps the inventor of the receiver device that captured the first wireless message sent across the Atlantic Ocean by Marconi. It is known that both Marconi and Bose were in London in 1896-97 and knew each other. The Electromagnetic Spectrum The electromagnetic radiation (radiant energy) ranges in wave length from almost zero to infinity, and the classification of the electromagnetic radiation with respect to wavelength (also en ergy or frequency) is referred to as the electromagnetic spectrum. Figure 2 shows the electromagnetic spectrum (EMS), which is essentially divided into seven parts for the sake of convenience. We shall see that this classification is actually related to the sources that produce these radiations. The seven parts, in a certain order, are: r-rays, X-rays, ultraviolet (UV), visible rays, infrared rays (IR), microwaves and radio waves. It is also inter esting to see that the visible part lies at the· centre of the ,spec trum, and is in fact, much too small as compared to the total spread of EMS. Though the speed of electromagnetic waves is constant in vacuum (=3 x 108 m/s), they propagate through material mediums at slower speeds. The speeds of propagation and wavelengths of electromagnetic waves change when they move from one medium to another. Their frequencies do not experience any change. This dependence of speed and wavelength on the medium and --------~-------- 10 RESONANCE I March 2003 GENERAL I ARTICLE constancy of frequency causes the separation of white light into its constituent colours when it moves via a prism. This phenom enon is known as dispersion oflight. Dispersion of the visible light was known right from the days of Issac Newton (1642-1727), and in fact, in those days, this dispersion of light into seven colours was known as the spectrum of light. Later measurement techniques showed that the violet end of visible spectrum oc curred at about 4000 A (400 nm) while the red end at about 7500 A (750 nm). This means that our eyes are sensitive only to EMR in this wavelength region. To make very rough order of magni tude estimates, one can assume that the red end occurs at 8000 A (800 nm), which bears a simple ratio of2 to the wavelength of the violet photon. The energy, wavelength and frequency of an EM photon are related through the equations he E=hv=- (1) .A ' where v and A are the frequency and wavelength of the photon, respectively, h is the Planck's constant, and c the speed of EMR in vacuum. The frequency and wavelength of a leV photon (with h = 6.6 10-34 Is, and E = 1 eV = 1.6 10-19 J) are: 19 _E _ 1.6x10- } --24 1014 -1- 1014H v - - - 34 -. x S -24 • x z, h 6.6 x 10- }s (2) If one uses more accurate values of all the constants, one finds that aleV photon has a wavelength of A = 1.240 x 10-6 m, or 1240 nm, and a frequency of 2.418 x 1014 Hz, that lies in the infrared region of the spectrum. As an easy aid to memory, one may as well take it to be 1234 nm, or 12345 A, with less th'an half a percent of error, or even a round figure like 1200 nm or 12000 A with about 3% error, which is quite tolerable when we make order of magnitude estimates. -R-ES-O-N-A-N-C-E--I-M-a-r-ch--2-0-03----------~-~-------------------------------11 GENERAL I ARTICLE Region Wavelength Range Energy Range Ratio Gamma rays 1 fm - 1 pm 1200 - l.2 MeV X-rays 1 pm - 10 nm l.2 MeV - 120 eV Ultraviolet rays 10 - 400 nm 120-3eV Visible light 400 - 800 nm 3 - 1.5 eV Infrared rays 800 nm - 1 em l.5 eV - 12 meV Microwaves 1 em - 10 m 12 meV - 12 ~eV Radio waves 10 m - 1 km 12 ~eV - 120 neV Table 1. The spectrum of Using this information, one can get the limiting energies of the electromagnetic radiation, visible region. Remember that the energy of a photon is in with its seven main parts versely related to its wavelength. Since a 1200 nm photon has an and their wavelength and energy limits, and ratio of energy of 1 eV, the violet photon and the red photon with limiting values. The bound wavelengths of 400 nm and 800 nm will have energies of 3 e V and aries between successive 1.5 e V, respectively. regions are fuzzy, and not sharp as shown here. The seven parts of the EMS are listed in Table 1, along with their approximate wavelength and energy ranges (although in prin ciple the EMS extends to infinity, here we only discuss the measurable part of A). The ratio between the largest and the smallest wavelength, or energy, at the two extremes of each range is also shown in the last column. One can notice that the measurable part of EMS spans about ~8 orders of magnitude 18 (wavelength ratio 1 km/1 fm = 10 ). Also, the visible region is very narrow in comparison to the total spread of the EMS.