CHEM 120 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Nanometre, Photon, Overhead Valve Engine
Document Summary
Section 2-1: electromagnetic radiation: light is an example of electromagnetic radiation, electromagnetic radiation is comprised of electromagnetic waves (oscillating electric and magnetic fields that are perpendicular to each other) Electromagnetic waves travel in vacuum at a constant speed called the speed of light (c): Interference of two waves is the combination of waves to make a single wave. At the end of the nineteenth century it was thought that matter and light were fundamentally distinct from each other. Matter is comprised of particles, which have mass and whose position in space can be specified. Certain experimental results revealed that this picture of nature where matter and light are distinct was incorrect. Studying the nature of radiation emitted by heated bodies, max planck made the revolutionary claim that heated bodies could only emit or absorb radiation energy in discrete packets or quanta".
