Applications of Blackbody Radiation

FIGURE 5.2 Blackbody radiation distribution for a variety of different temperatures. Notice that the curves shift with increasing temperature to shorter wavelengths and higher intensities, but otherwise they look identical. 

FIGURE 5.3 Efficiency of an ideal blackbody radiator for generating visible light (expressed as brightness per radiated watt). As the temperature increases, so does the fraction of light emitted in the visible. Thus the efficiency rises as well. 

At still lower temperatures little of the emission is in the visible, but the effects of blackbody radiation can still be very important. The Sun s light warms the Earth to a mean temperature of approximately 290K the Earth, in turn, radiates energy out into space. For the Earth kmax 10 // m, far out in the infrared. If this radiation is trapped 

---