NATS 1740 Chapter Notes - Chapter 5: Blueshift

• School: York University
• Department: Natural Science
• Course: NATS 1740
• Professor: Tatiana Paulin

Document Summary

Power=the rate of energy flow measured in watts. Emission- energy of the light comes from electrical potential energy. Wavelength- distance from one peak to the next. Frequency- # of peaks passing by any point each second ( measured in cycles per second or hz) Light is an electromagnetic wave because it is a traveling vibration of electric and magnetic fields. Molecular dissociation- when molecules split at high temperature. Pressure is the force per unit area pushing on an object"s surface. Law 1:each square meter of a hotter objects surface emits more light at all wavelengths. Law 2: hotter objects emit photons with a higher average energy, which means a shorter average wavelength. Doppler shift of an object coming towards us is called a blueshift- this is when the light waves bunch up, so it"s entire spectrum is shifted to shorter wavelengths. When an object is moving away it is called redshift because longer wavelengths of visible light are redder.