Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Different Wavelengths of Electromagnetic Radiation

AM and FM radio waves, cellphone emissions, television signals, visible light (light that is visible to us humans), and X-rays are all the exact same thing.
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They are just at different locations on the tuning dial.
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Beyond visible red there is light that humans cannot see with our eyes, but that we can feel as heat. These are called infrared waves.
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At the shorter end of the visibile spectrum, beyond purple/violet, there is still light that is just as real as those colors that we humans perceive as visible light. But our human eyes are not capable of receiving these frequencies. This is called ultraviolet light.
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And the different colors of ultraviolet light have different names, and different properties.
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Far beyond UV light (much shorter wavelength) is X-rays.

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