Lecture 34, March 29, 2004

Radiation contd.

Blackbody Emission contd.

Where h is Planck’s constant

Co is the speed of light in a vacuum
K is the Boltzmann constant

If n (index of refraction) is independent of wavelength,

we can recast this expression in terms of wavelength.

This is the Planck distribution for emission from a

blackbody.
 Wavelength is plotted on the x-axis, and emissive
power is plotted on the y-axis.

Note that the maximum energy occurs at increasing

wavelengths as the temperature decreases. This can
be described by Wiens law,

Band Emission

If we integrate Planck’s distribution over a specific

range of wavelengths, we can determine how much
energy is emitted in that range of wavelengths. This
is often very useful, and one application of doing this
is to determine how much energy from a tungsten
filament goes into visible radiation (how much useful
energy do we get out of the light bulb).

If we integrate Planck’s distribution over all possible

wavelengths, we arrive at the Stefan Boltzmann law.

Once we have integrated, we have summed the

energy at every wavelength, and therefore have no
more information about spectral variations. Instead,
we could have integrated over a specific range of
wavelengths to get information about that particular
band.

Table 12.1 in your text has a very nice table of these

fractions tabulated for convenient use.

On to the details and definitions,

Spectral intensity,

This is the most general description, where a surface

can emit at any range of wavelengths and directions.
If we integrate over a hemisphere (0 < theta < pi/2)
and (0 < phi < 2 pi) then we have,

We can then integrate over all wavelengths to

determine the total energy emitted from the surface,

Which is what is given by the Stefan-Boltzman law.

A surface which emits equally in all directions is called

a diffuse surface.