Why use intensity rather than photon count in Wien's displacement law for the sun's color

Join the discussion
Registration is free. Start your own thread to ask a follow-up.
2 replies · 2K views
Vrbic
Messages
400
Reaction score
18
I was thinking about the color of the sun. I would like to talk about an ideal case, no atmosphere etc. I looking for the peak in Planck's law in wavelengths (wl), i.e., the most radiated wl (or from Wien's law). But if I'm thinking about how we see that photons hitting our eyes and what wl is dominated such color we see. Why is the intensity of the electromagnetic waves (energy) used? And not the number of photons with specific wl? Distributions for both are different. What am I missing?
Is possible to see the Sun a bit greener than white from the space or in some ideal case or it is impossible for our eyes to recognize it?
 
Physics news on Phys.org
Vrbic said:
Why is the intensity of the electromagnetic waves (energy) used? And not the number of photons with specific wl? Distributions for both are different
Are the distributions different? Do you have a source for this?
 
Nugatory said:
Are the distributions different? Do you have a source for this?
I google it in english so I found first this http://hep.ph.liv.ac.uk/~hock/Teaching/StatisticalPhysics-Part5-Handout.pdf, but it is in any other textbook. Here equations 59 vs 60. I don't know, maybe reason is that devices measure intensity (energy) not number of photons. But I suppose human eyes no.