Frequency and Wavelength on Light Spectrum

$c=\lambda v$

Mrudula Akkinepally
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Joined: Wed Sep 30, 2020 9:31 pm

Frequency and Wavelength on Light Spectrum

For the midterm next week, do we need to know the frequency and wavelengths of different types of lights on the spectrum or just the wavelengths?

Marcus Lagman 2A
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Joined: Wed Sep 30, 2020 9:40 pm
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Re: Frequency and Wavelength on Light Spectrum

Hello!

According to my TA, she said that it would be best to know which specific wavelengths belong to each type of light on the spectrum.

Table for this in the textbook on
Focus 1 Atoms -> Topic 1A Investigating Atoms -> Figure 1A.9

I hope this helps!

Emerald Wong 1B
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Re: Frequency and Wavelength on Light Spectrum

There are some key values you should know! I think visible light (400nm - 700 nm), infrared, and ultraviolet are also necessary to know. Once you know the wavelengths, you can always use the speed of light equation to solve for frequency if needed. Some helpful things are that infrared has a very large range, so anything larger than 700 nm is likely infrared and that UV is from 1nm to 400 nm. I think these are fairly easy numbers that won't take too long to learn.

Hailey Kang 2K
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Re: Frequency and Wavelength on Light Spectrum

Hi!
I would definitely memorize some of the wavelengths such as:

Balmer series (visible light): 700nm-400nm
Lyman series (Uv region): less than 400nm
Infrared region: greater than 800nm

Posts: 92
Joined: Wed Sep 30, 2020 9:33 pm

Re: Frequency and Wavelength on Light Spectrum

By knowing which wavelengths each EM region corresponds to, you can also just calculate the frequency using c= wavelength x frequency. This way you won't have to memorize the frequency ranges. Hope this helps! :)

Gigi Elizarraras 2C
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Joined: Wed Sep 30, 2020 9:41 pm

Re: Frequency and Wavelength on Light Spectrum

My TA was telling us that learning too much about the electromagnetic spectrum would definitely be better than the alternative. We won't be given a guide to the EM spectrum so at look getting a rough idea of wavelength and their corresponding regions would be really beneficial. And knowing the wavelengths for the lyman and balmer series:)