Sentences with phrase «only absorb a photon»

According to quantum mechanics, an atom can only absorb a photon of particular energies and colors as the electron within the atom hops from a lower energy state to a higher energy state.

Not exact matches

But photons can only travel so far through air or optical fibers before the material absorbs the particles, limiting the distance over which communication is possible.

A study in the journal Nature Materials details the creation of a nanowire - based technology that absorbs solar energy at comparable levels to currently available systems while using only 1 percent of the silicon material needed to capture photons.

Only a photon that comes in with energy higher than the amount needed to power up an electron will get absorbed.

Photovoltaic cells, which absorb photons from sunlight and convert them to electricity, operate with only 20 percent efficiency.

The frequency at which photons are emitted or absorbed is small relative to the rate of energy redistribution among molecules and their modes, so the fraction of some molecules that are excited in some way is only slightly more or less than the characteristic fraction for that temperature (depending on whether photons absorption to generate that particular state is greater than photon emission from that state or vice versa, which depends on the brightness temperature of the incident radiation relative to the local temperature).

An individual molecule can only directly vaporize from an absorbed photon if that photon possesses enough energy to transfer to the molecule so that it can overcome the heat of vaporization barrier.

-- For the photons of interest, it is only the GHGs that are absorbing / emitting: if gas molecules don't have quantum transitions with the right energy differences, they can't interact with the photons.

How does a CO2 molecule, somewhere up in the middle troposphere, KNOW that it is only allowed to absorb upwelling radiation photons from the surface and must ignore all the other photons coming at it from all around in the atmosphere?

However as no additional heat or energy is absorbed (only that from the first generation photons) any temperature change would be very marginal.

Whether there is 0.03 % or 0.04 % of CO2 in the atmosphere only influences how often the photons get absorbed and re-radiated on their way to space — an increase in CO2 delays the process a little but does not change it fundamentally and * Does * * Not * * Trap * * Heat * any more than a sieve traps water.

And the CO2 molecule only «holds» that energy for a faction of a second, so a given molecule could in principle absorb many photons every second.

Or put another way, if there is so much water vapor around (3 % vs only 390ppm for CO2), and more GHGs means more warming, why does the GHE stop at 33C instead of continuing until all the water vapor absorbs a photon OR asked another way, who says that all the water vapor caused by the added CO2 will absorb a photon to cause more GHE warming?

It seemed an appropriate response to the apparent view that each photon gets absorbed only once — and that was what heated up the atmopshere.

The discrete energy levels can only absorb the exact wavelength corresponding to their energy separation, they don't absorb a photon which has too much energy and then discard the excess!