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Physics Lesson 12.2.3 - What Happens to Light When it Falls on Objects?
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Welcome to our Physics lesson on What Happens to Light When it Falls on Objects?, this is the third lesson of our suite of physics lessons covering the topic of Reflection of Light, you can find links to the other lessons within this tutorial and access additional physics learning resources below this lesson.
What Happens to Light When it Falls on Objects?
There are three possible situations a light ray may experience when it falls on objects.
- Reflection. It occurs when light does not penetrate inside the object but is repelled by the objects surface.
- Absorption. It occurs when light encounters a rough surface and it is absorbed by the object after making a number of collisions on its surface.
- Emission. It occurs when the absorbed light wave is too energetic and therefore, the object releases a part of it into the environment.
Look at the figure:
In general, good absorbers are also good emitters of light. This is because a material that accumulates large amount of sun radiation through absorption is more likely to emit some part of this radiation. Matt (rough) and dark coloured (possibly black) surfaces are good absorbers of sun radiation. This is the reason why we prefer to wear black clothes in winter.
On the other hand, bright (possibly white) coloured and smooth (flat) surfaces are bad absorbers of light as it is mostly reflected by such surfaces. As a result, they cannot accumulate energy through absorption. This is the reason why we prefer to wear white clothes in summer.
You have reached the end of Physics lesson 12.2.3 What Happens to Light When it Falls on Objects?. There are 4 lessons in this physics tutorial covering Reflection of Light, you can access all the lessons from this tutorial below.
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Enjoy the "What Happens to Light When it Falls on Objects?" physics lesson? People who liked the "Reflection of Light lesson found the following resources useful:
- Objects Feedback. Helps other - Leave a rating for this objects (see below)
- Optics Physics tutorial: Reflection of Light. Read the Reflection of Light physics tutorial and build your physics knowledge of Optics
- Optics Revision Notes: Reflection of Light. Print the notes so you can revise the key points covered in the physics tutorial for Reflection of Light
- Optics Practice Questions: Reflection of Light. Test and improve your knowledge of Reflection of Light with example questins and answers
- Check your calculations for Optics questions with our excellent Optics calculators which contain full equations and calculations clearly displayed line by line. See the Optics Calculators by iCalculator™ below.
- Continuing learning optics - read our next physics tutorial: Refraction of Light
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