Do all visible radiations have heat?

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All electromagnetic (EM) radiation carries energy, but not all light is considered thermal energy. Heat is defined as energy that is randomly distributed across a system's degrees of freedom, while light energy can be converted to thermal energy upon absorption by materials. In terrestrial environments, light does not contribute to heat until it is absorbed, whereas in a vacuum, light can represent heat energy. The context of the system determines whether light can be classified as heat; for example, sunlight can be considered heat when discussing its effect on Earth. Overall, while light can cause temperature increases in objects, it is not inherently thermal energy until it interacts with matter.
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For example when you make a laser , does heat come with it?
 
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That is oddly worded, but all EM radiation carries energy, so yes.
 
Well i don't mean radiant energy , i mean do all light have thermal energy?
 
Are you asking all light, rather than just infra red light that we commonly call as thermal radiation?

I think the answer is yes, because I asked a similar question about a month ago and people helped clarify.

https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=608036
 
Your questions indicate that you are confused about what heat is. Heat is basically energy, but the exact definition depends on the physical context. If you get into the nitty gritty, heat is a pretty difficult subject.

Heat is energy that is more or less randomly distributed across all the degrees of freedom within a system. In typical terrestrial situations, that means most of the energy is in random kinetic motion of the molecules, as well as various vibrational and rotational modes of the molecules. For typical terrestrial situations, very little heat energy is in the form of light.

On the other hand, in a vacuum, most of the heat energy could be in the form of light, because without any other particles, photons are the main degrees of freedom of the system.

If you shine a light on something on Earth, then the light is not considered heat because it doesn't randomly occupy all the degrees of freedom of the air that it is traveling through. But, after the light is absorbed by various materials, it is converted to heat.
 
Khashishi said:
Your questions indicate that you are confused about what heat is. Heat is basically energy, but the exact definition depends on the physical context. If you get into the nitty gritty, heat is a pretty difficult subject.

Heat is energy that is more or less randomly distributed across all the degrees of freedom within a system. In typical terrestrial situations, that means most of the energy is in random kinetic motion of the molecules, as well as various vibrational and rotational modes of the molecules. For typical terrestrial situations, very little heat energy is in the form of light.

On the other hand, in a vacuum, most of the heat energy could be in the form of light, because without any other particles, photons are the main degrees of freedom of the system.

If you shine a light on something on Earth, then the light is not considered heat because it doesn't randomly occupy all the degrees of freedom of the air that it is traveling through. But, after the light is absorbed by various materials, it is converted to heat.
Heat is the flow of energy I thought. As in energy transfer. Temperature, as opposed to heat, is the way to quantitatively describe energy level increase in particles after heat has been transferred, so I don't think you would say light is converted to heat, but rather converted to temperature increase. Heat would be the process of light energy converted to thermal energy, or in other words heat is the amount of energy that has been transferred to thermal energy.
 
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So let's say you get this laser and concentrate on a small object , will the object be heated up?
 
Well, yes, heat is used to describe the flow of energy. But not just any energy. It describes a sort of randomly distributed, high entropy energy. Structured energy could be considered as "work" when talking about the flow of energy.
 
So your point is that light does not carry heat at all? I think I would agree with that; its electromagnetic energy can only be converted to thermal energy by electrical interaction with charged particles, and the amount of energy converted would be considered heat transfer.
 
  • #10
Karimspencer: yes.

DragonPetter: It depends on the context. Like a lot of physics problems, it depends on where you put the boundaries of your system. I don't know if everyone agrees on this. The way I see it, blackbody radiation can be considered heat depending on how it is used. Sunlight within the Sun is heat energy, and it travels to the Earth and heats the Earth. Now, sunlight within the Earth is not in thermal equilibrium with the Earth, so, if you just consider a system including the sunlight and the Earth, then the sunlight isn't heat. But if you consider a system including the Sun, sunlight, and the Earth, then sunlight can be considered heat. Yeah, it's complicated...

The Earth emits a certain amount of infrared emission because it is warm. It also reflects a certain amount of sunlight. Viewed from afar, the infrared emission is "heat" emission from the Earth, and the reflected sunlight is not.
 
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  • #11
I think i would disagree , a lot of visible light rays carry heat for example microwaves, the sun ..but what i want to know :"Do all light carry heat(thermal) energy?"
 
  • #12
I agree with you Khashishi
 
  • #13
I would say that if it is emitted and absorbed via black body radiation, then it transferred heat. If the intermediate form was electromagnetic rather than thermal, I'm not sure that matters - I'd want to know more about the context of the question.

Heat is the transfer of thermal energy and thermal energy is molecular vibration. Light is not molecular vibration.
 
  • #14
Okay let's say you concentrate any kind of light on an object would lt heat up russ
 
  • #15
Karim, have you ever been in a spotlight?
 
  • #16
Karimspencer said:
Okay let's say you concentrate any kind of light on an object would lt heat up russ
Not necessarily and even if it does, it wouldn't necessarily heat up in an amount equal to the light's energy. A solar panel, for example, converts some light directly into electrical energy.
 
  • #17
When you put a dark object in sunlight, its temperature and thermal energy increase. Thermodynamically the energy transfer into the object is called "work" not "heat". The alternating electric field of the light waves causes electrical forces on electrons near the surface of the material. The electrons move in response, so work is done by the electrical forces.
 
  • #18
Well what are the difference between the properties of light that carries heat and one that doesn't.
 
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