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ABSORPTION OF LIGHT

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Originally appearing in Volume V01, Page 77 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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ABSORPTION OF See also:

LIGHT . The See also:term " absorption " (from See also:Lat. absorbere) means literally " sucking up " or " swallowing," and thus a See also:total See also:incorporation in something, literally or figuratively ; it is technically used in See also:animal See also:physiology for the See also:function of certain vessels which suck up fluids; and in light and See also:optics absorption spectrum and absorption See also:band are terms used in the discussion of the transformation of rays in various See also:media. If a luminous See also:body is surrounded by empty space, the light which it emits suffers no loss of See also:energy as it travels outwards. The intensity of the light diminishes merely because the total energy, though unaltered, is distributed over a wider and wider See also:surface as the rays diverge from the source. To prove this, it will be sufficient to mention that an exceedingly small deficiency in the transparency of the See also:free See also:aether would be sufficient to pre-vent the light of the fixed stars from reaching the See also:earth, since their distances are so immense. But when light is transmitted through a material See also:medium, it always suffers some loss, the light energy being absorbed by the medium, that is, converted partially or wholly into other forms of energy such as See also:heat, a portion of which transformed energy may be re-emitted as radiant energy of a See also:lower frequency. Even the most transparent bodies known absorb an appreciable portion of the light transmitted through them. Thus the See also:atmosphere absorbs a See also:part of the See also:sun's rays, and the greater the distance which the rays have to See also:traverse the greater is the proportion which is absorbed, so that on this See also:account the sun appears less See also:bright towards sunset. On the other See also:hand, light can penetrate some distance into all substances, even the most opaque, the absorption being, however, extremely rapid in the latter See also:case. The nature of the surface of a body has considerable See also:influence on its See also:power of absorbing light. See also:Platinum See also:black, for instance, in which the See also:metal is in a See also:state of See also:fine See also:division, absorbs nearly all the light incident on it, while polished platinum reflects the greater part. In the former case the light penetrating between the particles is unable to See also:escape by reflexion, and is finally absorbed.

The question of absorption may be considered from either of two points of view. We may treat it as a superficial effect, especially in the case of bodies which are opaque enough or thick enough to prevent all transmission of light, and we may investigate how much is reflected at the surface and how much is absorbed; or, on the other hand, we may confine our See also:

attention to the light which enters the body and inquire into the relation between the decay of intensity and the See also:depth of penetration. We shall take these two cases separately. Absorptive Power.—When none of the radiations which fall on a body penetrates through its substance, then the ratio of the amount of See also:radiation of a given See also:wave-length which is absorbed to the total amount received is called the " absorptive power " of the body for that wave-length. Thus if the body absorbed See also:half the incident radiation its absorptive power would be 2, and if it absorbed all the incident radiation its absorptive power would be r. A body which absorbs all radiations of all wave-lengths would be called a " perfectly black body." No such body actually exists, but such substances as See also:lamp-black and platinum-black approximately fulfil the See also:condition. The fraction of the incident radiation which is not absorbed by a body gives a measure of its reflecting power, with which we are not here concerned. Most bodies exhibit a selective See also:action on light, that is to say, they readily absorb light of particular wave-lengths, light of other wave-lengths not being largely absorbed. All bodies when heated emit the same See also:kind of radiations which they absorb—an important principle known as the principle of the equality of radiating and absorbing See also:powers. Thus black sub-stances such as See also:charcoal are very luminous when heated. A See also:tile of See also:white See also:porcelain with a black See also:pattern on it will, if heated red-hot, show the pattern bright on a darker ground. On the other hand, those substances which either are See also:good reflectors or good transmitters, are not so luminous at the same temperature; for instance, melted See also:silver, which reflects well, is not so luminous as See also:carbon at the same temperature, and See also:common See also:salt, which is very transparent for most kinds of radiation, when poured in a fused condition out of a bright red-hot crucible, looks almost like See also:water, showing only a faint red glow for a moment or two.

But all such bodies appear to lose their distinctive properties when heated in a See also:

vessel which nearly encloses them, for in that case those radiations which they do not emit are either transmitted through them from the walls of the vessel behind, or else reflected from their surface. This fact may be expressed by saying that the radiation within a heated enclosure is the same as that of a perfectly black body. Coefficient of Absorption, and See also:Law of Absorption.—The law which governs the See also:rate of decay of light intensity in passing through any medium may be readily obtained. If Io represents the intensity of the light which enters the surface, I1 the intensity after passing through 1 centimetre, I2 the intensity after passing through 2 centimetres, and so on; then we should expect that whatever fraction of lo is absorbed in the first centimetre, the same fraction of I1 will be absorbed in the second. That is, if an amount jIo is absorbed in the first centimetre, jI1 is absorbed in the second, and so on. We have then I,=Io(1 9) I2 =11(1-i) = Io(1 J)2 Is = 12(1-i) = l0(1 7)3 and so on, so that if I is the intensity after passing through a thickness t in centimetres = le (1 J)` (1). We might See also:call j, which is the proportion absorbed in one centimetre, the "coefficient of absorption" of the medium. It would, however, not then apply to the case of a body for which the whole light is absorbed in less than one centimetre. It is better then to define the coefficient of absorption as a quantity k such that k/n of the light is absorbed in 1/nth part of a centimetre, where n may be taken to be a very large number. The See also:formula (1) then becomes I = fpe—ke (2) where e is the See also:base of Napierian logarithms, and k is a See also:constant which is practically the same as j for bodies which do ndt absorb very rapidly. There is another coefficient of absorption (K) which occurs in See also:Helmholtz's theory of See also:dispersion (see DISPERSION). It is closely related to the coefficient k which we have just defined, the See also:equation connecting the two being k=47rK/X,X being the wave-length of the incident light.

The law of absorption expressed by the formula (2) has been verified by experiments for various solids, liquids and gases. The method consists in comparing the intensity after trans-See also:

mission through a layer of known thickness of the absorbent with the intensity of light from the same source which has not passed through the medium, k being thus obtained for various thicknesses and found to be constant. In the case of solutions, if the absorption of the solvent is negligible, the effect of in-creasing the concentration of the absorbing solute is the same as that of increasing the thickness in the same ratio. In a similar way the absorption of light in the coloured See also:gas See also:chlorine is found to be unaltered if the thickness is reduced by See also:compression, because the See also:density is increased in the same ratio that the thickness is reduced. This is not strictly the case, however, for such gases and vapours as exhibit well-defined bands of absorption in the spectrum, as these bands are altered in See also:character by compression. If white light is allowed to fall on some coloured solutions, the transmitted light is of one See also:colour when the thickness of the See also:solution is small, and of quite another colour if the thickness is See also:great. This curious phenomenon is known as dichromatism (from &-, two, and Xpiaµa, colour). Thus, when a strong light is viewed through a solution of See also:chlorophyll, the light seen is a brilliant See also:green if the thickness is small, but a deep See also:blood-red for thicker layers. This effect can be explained as follows. The solution is moderately transparent for a large number of raysin the neighbourhood of the green part of the spectrum; it is, on the whole, much more opaque for red rays, but is readily penetrated by certain red rays belonging to a narrow region of the spectrum. The small amount of red transmitted is at first quite overpowered by the green, but having a smaller coefficient of absorption, it becomes finally predominant. The effect is complicated, in the case of chlorophyll and many other bodies, by selective reflexion and See also:fluorescence.

For the molecular theory of absorption, see See also:

SPECTROSCOPY. REFERENCES.—A. Schuster's Theory of Optics (1904); P. K. L. Drude's Theory of Optics (Eng. trans., 1902); F. H. Wtillner's Lehrbuch der Experimentalphysik, Bd. iv. (1899). (J. R.

End of Article: ABSORPTION OF LIGHT

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