Electromagnetic Waves

Electromagnetic Spectrum

Radio Waves

Microwaves

Infrared Rays

Visible Light

Ultraviolet Rays X-Rays Gamma

Rays

Radio WavesRadio waves are a type of electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum longer than infrared light. Naturally-occurring radio waves are produced by lightning, or by astronomical objects. Artificially-generated radio waves are used for fixed and mobile radio communication, broadcasting, radar and other navigation systems, satellite communication, computer networks and innumerable other applications. Different frequencies of radio waves have different propagation characteristics in the Earth's atmosphere; long waves may cover a part of the Earth very consistently, shorter waves can reflect off the ionosphere and travel around the world, and much shorter wavelengths bend or reflect very little and travel on a line of sight.

Microwaves are electromagnetic waves with wavelengths ranging from as long as one meter to as short as one millimeter, or equivalently, with frequencies between 300 MHz (0.3 GHz) and 300 GHz.[1] This broad definition includes both UHF and EHF (millimeter waves), and various sources use different boundaries.[2] In all cases, microwave includes the entire SHF band (3 to 30 GHz, or 10 to 1 cm) at minimum, with RF engineering often putting the lower boundary at 1 GHz (30 cm), and the upper around 100 GHz (3mm).

Microwaves

InfraredInfrared radiation (IR) is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength between 0.7 and 300 micrometres, which equates to a frequency range between approximately 1 and 430 THz.[1]

Its wavelength is longer (and the frequency lower) than that of visible light, but the wavelength is shorter (and the frequency higher) than that of terahertz radiation microwaves. Bright sunlight provides an irradiance of just over 1 kilowatt per square meter at sea level. Of this energy, 527 watts is infrared light, 445 watts is visible light, and 32 watts is ultraviolet light.[2]

The visible spectrum is the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that is visible to (can be detected by) the human eye. Electromagnetic radiation in this range of wavelengths is called visible light or simply light. A typical human eye will respond to wavelengths from about 390 to 750 nm.[1] In terms of frequency, this corresponds to a band in the vicinity of 790–400 terahertz. A light-adapted eye generally has its maximum sensitivity at around 555 nm (540 THz), in the green region of the optical spectrum (see: luminosity function). The spectrum does not, however, contain all the colors that the human eyes and brain can distinguish. Unsaturated colors such as pink, or purple variations such as magenta, are absent, for example, because they can only be made by a mix of multiple wavelengths.

Visible Light

Visible wavelengths also pass through the "optical window", the region of the electromagnetic spectrum that passes largely unattenuated through the Earth's atmosphere. Clean air scatters blue light more than wavelengths toward the red, which is why the mid-day sky appears blue. The human eye's response is defined by subjective testing (see CIE), but atmospheric windows are defined by physical measurement.

The "visible window" is so called because it overlaps the human visible response spectrum. The near infrared (NIR) windows lie just out of human response window, and the Medium Wavelength IR (MWIR) and Long Wavelength or Far Infrared (LWIR or FIR) are far beyond the human response region.

Ultraviolet (UV) light is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength shorter than that of visible light, but longer than x-rays, in the range 10 nm to 400 nm, and energies from 3 eV to 124 eV. It is so named because the spectrum consists of electromagnetic waves with frequencies higher than those that humans identify as the color violet.UV light is found in sunlight and is emitted by electric arcs and specialized lights such as black lights. As an ionizing radiation it can cause chemical reactions, and causes many substances to glow or fluoresce. Most people are aware of the effects of UV through the painful condition of sunburn, but the UV spectrum has many other effects, both beneficial and damaging, on human health.

Ultraviolet

X-radiation (composed of X-rays) is a form of electromagnetic radiation. X-rays have a wavelength in the range of 10 to 0.01 nanometers, corresponding to frequencies in the range 30 petahertz to 30 exahertz (3 × 1016 Hz to 3 × 1019 Hz) and energies in the range 120 eV to 120 keV. They are shorter in wavelength than UV rays. In many languages, X-radiation is called Roentgen radiation, after Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, who is generally credited as their discoverer, and who had named them X-rays to signify an unknown type of radiation.:1-

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X-rays from about 0.12 to 12 keV (10 to 0.10 nm wavelength), are classified as "soft" X-rays, and from about 12 to 120 keV (0.10 to 0.010 nm wavelength) as "hard" X-rays, due to their penetrating abilities.

X-Rays

Hard X-rays can penetrate solid objects, and their largest use is to take images of the inside of objects in diagnostic radiography and crystallography. As a result, the term X-ray is metonymically used to refer to a radiographic image produced using this method, in addition to the method itself. By contrast, soft X-rays can hardly be said to penetrate matter at all; for instance, the attenuation length of 600 eV (~ 2 nm) x-rays in water is less than 1 micrometer X-rays are a form of ionizing radiation, and exposure to them can be a health hazard.The distinction between X-rays and gamma rays has changed in recent decades. Originally, the electromagnetic radiation emitted by X-ray tubes had a longer wavelength than the radiation emitted by radioactive nuclei (gamma rays).[4] So older literature distinguished between X- and gamma radiation on the basis of wavelength, with radiation shorter than some arbitrary wavelength, such as 10−11 m, defined as gamma rays. However, as shorter wavelength continuous spectrum "X-ray" sources such as linear accelerators and longer wavelength "gamma ray" emitters were discovered, the wavelength bands largely overlapped. The two types of radiation are now usually distinguished by their origin: X-rays are emitted by electrons outside the nucleus, while gamma rays are emitted by the nucleus

Gamma rays (denoted as γ) are electromagnetic radiation of high frequency (very short wavelength). They are produced by sub-atomic particle interactions such as electron-positron annihilation, neutral pion decay, radioactive decay, fusion, fission or inverse Compton scattering in astrophysical processes. Gamma rays typically have frequencies above 1019 Hz, and therefore have energies above 100 keV and wavelength less than 10 picometers, often smaller than an atom. Gamma radioactive decay photons commonly have energies of a few hundred keV, and are almost always less than 10 MeV in energy.Because they are a form of ionizing radiation, gamma rays can cause serious damage when absorbed by living tissue and, are therefore a health hazard.Paul Villard, a French chemist and physicist, discovered gamma radiation in 1900, while studying radiation emitted from radium. Alpha and beta "rays" had already been separated and named by the work of Ernest Rutherford in 1899, and in 1903 Rutherford named Villard's distinct new radiation "gamma rays.“

Gamma Rays

In the past, the distinction between X-rays and gamma rays was based on energy (or equivalently frequency or wavelength), the latter being considered a higher-energy version of the former. However, high-energy X-rays produced by linear accelerators ("linacs") and astrophysical processes now often have higher energy than gamma rays produced by radioactive gamma decay. In fact, one of the most common gamma-ray emitting isotopes used in nuclear medicine, technetium-99m, produces gamma radiation of about the same energy (140 KeV) as produced by a diagnostic X-ray machine, and significantly lower energy than the therapeutic treatment X-rays produced by linac machines in cancer radiotherapy. Because of this overlap in energy ranges, the two types of electromagnetic radiation are now usually defined by their origin: X-rays are emitted by electrons outside the nucleus, while gamma rays are emitted by the nucleus (that is, produced by gamma decay), or from other particle decays or annihilation events. There is no lower limit to the energy of photons produced by nuclear reactions, and thus ultraviolet and even lower energy photons produced by these processes would also be defined as "gamma rays". In certain fields such as astronomy, gamma rays and X-rays are still sometimes defined by energy, as the processes which produce them may be uncertain.