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The emissivity of the surface of a material is its effectiveness in emitting energy as thermal radiation. Thermal radiation is electromagnetic radiation that most commonly includes both visible radiation (light) and infrared radiation, which is not visible to human eyes.
Emissivity can in general depend on wavelength, direction, and polarization. However, the emissivity which appears in the non-directional form of the Stefan–Boltzmann law is the hemispherical total emissivity, which reflects emissions as totaled over all wavelengths, directions, and polarizations. [3]: 60
Kirchhoff's law of thermal radiation has a refinement in that not only is thermal emissivity equal to absorptivity, it is equal in detail. Consider a leaf. Consider a leaf. It is a poor absorber of green light (around 470 nm), which is why it looks green.
The same phenomena makes the absorptivity of incoming radiation less than 1 and equal to emissivity (Kirchhoff's law). When radiation has not passed far enough through a homogeneous medium for emission and absorption to reach thermodynamic equilibrium or when the medium changes with distance, Planck's Law and the Stefan-Boltzmann equation do ...
Low emissivity (low e or low thermal emissivity) refers to a surface condition that emits low levels of radiant thermal (heat) energy. All materials absorb, reflect, and emit radiant energy according to Planck's law but here, the primary concern is a special wavelength interval of radiant energy, namely thermal radiation of materials.
By definition, a black body in thermal equilibrium has an emissivity ε = 1. A source with a lower emissivity, independent of frequency, is often referred to as a gray body. [3] [4] Constructing black bodies with an emissivity as close to 1 as possible remains a topic of current interest. [5]
The face of the cube that has been painted black emits thermal radiation strongly. The polished face of the aluminum cube emits much more weakly, and the reflected image of the warm hand is clear. In contemporary terms, the emissivities of shiny metals are low. Isinglass is an organic glue, and has a much larger emissivity than the metals.
Since the emissivity is limited by 1, the brightness temperature is a lower bound of the object’s actual temperature. For radiation emitted by a non-thermal source such as a pulsar, synchrotron, maser, or a laser, the brightness temperature may be far higher than the actual temperature of the source. [7]