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black-body radiation

black-body radiation

1 7.6
Light and heat given off by an object that absorbs all light, changing colour with temperature
  • noun
  • /blæk ˈbɑdi ˌreɪdiˈeɪʃən/
  • Specialized
translation icon : radiación de cuerpo negro
  • Black-body radiation—the distribution of the different frequencies of light by a heated object—is a case in point.

Things like lava or hot coals glow because of what's called black body radiation.

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Examples

  • Martin provided a brief refresher on black body radiation.

    Academic text (2000)
  • We started out with black body radiation, thermal radiation.

  • And the black body, black body radiation carries entropy.

  • The research paper explained black-body radiation and its significance in thermodynamics.

  • Scientists use the concept of black-body radiation to study the properties of stars.

  • Planck's law describes the energy distribution of black-body radiation based on temperature.

Synonyms

blackbody radiation
vsblack-body radiation
  • Specialized
1 8.5

The light and heat given off by a perfect object that absorbs all light, depending only on its temperature

is the same concept but written with a hyphen and linked to Planck's law

Surface Forms

Morphology

black-body + radiation

The phrase literally combines 'black' + 'body' + 'radiation', so a learner who knows the words may infer it refers to radiation coming from a body described as 'black'. However, 'black body' is a technical physics term (an ideal absorber/emitter) and the precise scientific meaning (energy distribution determined by temperature, Planck's law) is not derivable from the constituents alone. Therefore the expression is only partially transparent: some intuitive sense is accessible, but full understanding requires domain knowledge.

Etymology

Black-body radiation comes from the image of a perfectly black body, an object that 'absorbs all light' and then, when heated, glows. The color and amount of that glow change with temperature, so the phrase means the light energy a perfect black object gives off that 'depends only on temperature'.