Where does the light go when you turn off its source?
Where does the light go when you turn off its source?
Isnt it conserved? Why cant you see it anymore?
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17 comments
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It gets absorbed and reemitted by the walls of the room. Its reemitted as infrared light, due to the temperature of the walls. Eventually it just all ends up as heat.
The answer to the question "where did the energy go?" is "heat" 99% of the time.
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Well, some of it might manage to go out the window.
Most of that will probably hit another building, or a tree, or the ground, or something, and get absorbed (and permitted), but some of it might not hit anything solid and carry on into the atmosphere... where a good part of it will end up hitting a cloud, or a nitrogen atom, or a pigeon... but some might end up in space. And carry on for aeons, into the cosmos.
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And the remaining 1% of the time it is, "It excited an electron in this atom into a higher state, which will drop down later and emit some radiation, which will then hit something and then be converted to heat."
Every once in a blue moon it's, "It overloaded this atom's nucleus and now that atom is two atoms. And some heat." Those are always fun times.
But at the end of the day the answer is always heat... eventually.
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You're forgetting about "a thing moved up" and "some atoms are now attached to eachother differently"
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What brand light switches are you guys using?
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AZ-5 switches.
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17 comments