Sunlight:

The sun is the source of the life on our planet Earth and, directly or indirectly, is the fuel for
most renewable systems. The sun is made up of about 80% hydrogen, 20% helium and only
0.1% other elements. Its radiant power comes from nuclear fusion processes, during which the
sun loses 4.3 million tones of mass each second. This mass is converted into radiant energy.
 Sunlight is a portion of the electromagnetic radiation given off by the Sun, in
particular infrared, visible, and ultraviolet light. On Earth, sunlight is filtered through Earth's
atmosphere, and is obvious as daylight when the Sun is above the horizon. When the
direct solar radiation is not blocked by clouds, it is experienced as sunshine, a combination
of bright light and radiant heat. When it is blocked by clouds or reflects off other objects, it
is experienced as diffused light.
 The total specific radiant power, or radiant flux, per area that reaches a Spectrum receiver
surface is called irradiance. Irradiance is measured in W /m ². The World Meteorological
Organization uses the term "sunshine duration" to mean the cumulative time during which
an area receives direct irradiance from the Sun of at least 120 watts per square meter.

 Sunlight takes about 8.3 minutes to reach Earth from the surface of the Sun.
 Sunlight is a key factor in photosynthesis, the process used by plants and
other autotrophic organisms to convert light energy, normally from the Sun, into chemical
energy that can be used to synthesize carbohydrates and to fuel the organisms' activities.

Blackbody:
An object is deemed to be a perfect black body when it can absorb all amounts of the incoming
light without reflecting any. At room temperature, it would appear perfectly black. At any
specified temperature, the radiation a blackbody emits is the maximum possible amount at that
given temperature.
Theories of Light

Light is a form of energy that travels from one place to another place at high velocity.
 Newton’s corpuscular theory
 Huygen’s wave theory
 Maxwell’s electromagnetic wave theory
 Planck’s quantum theory

Newton’s corpuscular theory

The Corpuscular theory of light was proposed by Newton in 1704. A source of light continuously
emits tiny elastic particles called corpuscles. These particles or the corpuscles moves with high
velocity as that of light and gets scattered in all directions of light. This theory says that the
velocity of light changes with the change in density of the medium in which it is used. This
theory could explain three main phenomena of light that is reflection, refraction, and rectilinear
propagation of light. This theory also says that the color of light is dependent on the size of the
corpuscles.

Main drawbacks of this theory

a) This theory could not explain the phenomena of interference, diffraction, and polarization
of light etc.
b) According to this theory the velocity of light in denser medium is greater than the velocity
of light in rarer medium but this is proved wrong later.
c) This theory assumes that the source of light looses the mass as it emits corpuscles; but not
such determent in mass of the source of light is detected.
d) This theory proposes that velocity of the corpuscles increases as the temperature of the
source increases as the temperature increases experiments have proved that the velocity of
light is independent of temperature.
Huygen’s wave theory

 Light from a source is propagated in the form of longitudinal wave with the uniform velocity in the
homogeneous medium.
 These waves emitted by the source moves in a straight in the homogeneous and hypothetical
medium called ether.
 Ether was assumed to be a continuous medium, which provides all space having very large elasticity,
and extremely low density, which is homogeneous and isotropic.
 This theory is successful in explaining the phenomena of reflection, refraction, interference and
diffraction phenomena of light.
 This theory also assumes in similar to the previous theory that the velocity of light is dependent on
the density of the medium but color depends on the wavelength of the light.
 Wave theory correctly predicted that velocity of light in an optically denser medium is less than that
of in a rarer medium which is in agreement with the experimental results.

Drawbacks
a) There is no existence of a medium ‘ether’
b) It falls to explain polarization, photoelectric effect and Compton effect.
c) It fails to explain why light has no longitudinal component.

Maxwell’s Electromagnetic wave theory

 The electric and magnetic fields in a electromagnetic wave are continuously varying with
respect to time and space.
 At any instant electric and magnetic fields are perpendicular to each other and also
perpendicular to the direction of light.
 The electromagnetic wave is a transverse wave.
 At every point in the wave at a given instant of time the electric and magnetic field
strengths are equal.
 The velocity of propagation of electromagnetic wave depends on the electric and magnetic
properties of the medium.
 The main drawback of this theory is it failed to explain the photoelectric effect and
Compton Effect.
 Electromagnetic theory also failed in explaining the black body radiation

Planck’s Quantum theory

 According to this theory, light energy is released from source discretely in the form of
energy packets of specific frequencies called photons or quanta.
 Photons are propagated as waves and if necessary interact with matter as particles.
 This phenomenon of Compton effect, photoelectric effect and black body radiation. The
main drawback of this theory is it could not explain how it is connected with wave nature of
light.

Optics
 Branch of physics which involves the behavior and properties of light including its
interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it.
 Astronomy, Various Engineering Fields, Photography, Mirrors, Lenses, Telescopes,
Microscopes, LASER, Holography and Fibre Optics etc.

Photons: A photon is the smallest discrete amount or quantum of electromagnetic radiation.

It is the basic unit of all light.

The basic properties of photons are:

 They have zero mass and rest energy.

 They are elementary particles despite lacking rest mass.

 They have no electric charge. They are spin-1 particles which make them bosons.
 They carry energy and momentum which are dependent on the frequency.
 They can have interactions with other particles such as electrons, such as the compton
effect.
 They can be destroyed or created by many natural processes, for instance when radiation is
absorbed or emitted.
 When in empty space, they travel at the speed of light
Light: light sometimes refers to electromagnetic radiation of any wavelength, whether visible
or not. In this sense, gamma rays, X-rays, microwaves and radio waves are also light.

Characteristics of EM wave:
a) Changes in the Electric field and magnetic field occur at the same time, so that the two
fields have a maximum and minimum value at the same time and at the same place.
b) The direction of electric filed and magnetic field perpendicular to each other and both
perpendicular to the direction of wave propagation.
c) The electromagnetic waves are transverse wave.
d) Like waves in general, an incident EM wave shows reflection, interference and diffraction.
Also experienced a polarization behavior.
e) Fast propagation of the EM waves depends only on the electrical properties and the
magnetic medium by which it occurred.

Wave Front: A wave front is a surface over which an optical wave has a constant phase.
Superposition of waves: If two waves cross through a particle of a medium simultaneously,
then each wave will displace that particle. As a result, there will be a resultant displacement of
the particle. This resultant displacement will be equal to the sum of individual displacement by
the two waves. This is called superposition of waves.

Coherent source:
Two sources are said to be coherent, if they emit light waves of the same frequency, nearly the
same amplitude and are always in phase with each-other.

Monochromatic Light:
Monochromatic light refers to the light that is of one color. Since it only emits one color,
monochromatic light has a single wavelength.
Interference of light:
Interference is defined as the phenomenon in which two waves of same amplitude and nearly
the same frequency, superpose each other to form a resultant wave of greater (constructive
interference) or lower amplitude (destructive interference).

Conditions of interference of light:

The following conditions are needed to be fulfilled for interference-
a) The two sources of light should be coherent sources.
b) The source should be monochromatic.
c) The two sources of light should be very fine and small.
d) The two sources of light should be very close to each other.
e) The amplitude of the two waves should be equal or nearly equal.
f) For alternate bright and dark points, the path difference between the waves should be

λ
nλand ( 2 n+1 ) .
2