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Why are the graphs for the distribution of light from the Sun as a function of (a) frequency and (b) wavelength not exactly reversed? (www.wtamu.edu)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by BackOnMyBS to c/askscience

15 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I thought that the frequency of light was directly inverse to the wavelength by a constant. In other words, I assumed that graphing the frequency of light as a function of wavelength would be a straight inverse line. Because of that, the graphs for the distribution of light from the sun as functions of frequency and wavelength would be exactly the same, but reversed. Yet, this is not what is reported in the linked article. Even more confusing to me is that the different functions peak at different light. When as a function of frequency, the light peaks at infrared. When as a function of wavelength, the light peaks at violet.

What am I misunderstanding? Is the frequency of light not directly proportional to it's wavelength? Or is this something to do with the way we are measuring the light from the Sun?

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[–] BackOnMyBS 8 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Interesting. Sparked by your comment, I found this.

What's the maximun frequency of light?

Approximately 2 x 10^43 Hz is the "Planck frequency" (the inverse of the Planck time). At that frequency, individual photons (or any other particle with this much energy) would be black holes (their Compton wavelength would be smaller than their Schwartzchild radius), and so until someone comes up with a theory of light which includes virtual black-holes, photons with a frequency above this cannot be considered sensible.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

I think that answer is a touch misleading because it makes it sound like this is a fundamental physical limit, when really it's just the scale where our current theories break down and give nonsense results, so we don't really know what is going on at that scale yet.

[–] GlowHuddy 3 points 10 months ago

wow TIL sth as well I guess