A better presentation of Planck's radiation law

Details A better presentation of Planck's radiation law A better presentation of Planck's radiation law

2011-09-17

arxiv.org/abs/1109.3822v3

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics

2 figures. Accepted to the American Journal of Physics. Major revision includes much more discussion of the Stefan-Boltzmann l

Scientific paper

Introductory physics and astronomy courses commonly use Wien's displacement law to explain the colors of blackbodies, including the Sun and other stars, in terms of their temperatures. We argue here that focusing on the peak of the blackbody spectrum is misleading for three reasons. First, the Planck curve is too broad for an individual spectral color to stand out. Second, the location of the peak of the Planck curve depends on the choice of the independent variable in the plot. And third, Wien's displacement law is seldom used in actual practice to find a temperature and direct fitting to the Planck function is preferable. We discuss these flaws and argue that, at the introductory level, presentation of blackbody radiation in terms of photon statistics would be more effective pedagogically. The average energy of the emitted photons would then be presented in place of Wien's displacement law, and discussion of the Stefan-Boltzmann law would include the total number of photons emitted per second. Finally, we suggest that the Planck spectrum is most appropriately plotted as a "spectral energy density per fractional bandwidth distribution," using a logarithmic scale for the wavelength or frequency.

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