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Blackbody Radiation

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Computer Vision

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Synonyms

Thermal Radiator

Related Concepts

Definition

A blackbody is an idealized object that absorbs all electromagnetic radiation incident on it. The absorbed energy is incandescently emitted with a spectral power distribution that is a function of its temperature. It is called a blackbody partly because it appears black to the human observer when it is cold, as it emits mostly infrared radiation.

Background

Blackbody radiation, in general, stood as a major challenge to the scientists in the nineteenth century as they were pushing the limits of classical physics. Several physicists studied blackbody radiators, including Lord Rayleigh, James Jeans, Josef Stefan, Gustav Kirchhoff, Ludwig Boltzmann, Wilhelm Wien, and finally, Max Planck, who arguably broke the way for quantum physics.

Wien’s approximation is used to approximately describe the spectral content of radiation from a blackbody. This approximation was first derived by Wilhelm Wien in 1893 [8]. This law was...

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References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. San Jose, CA, USA

    Rajeev Ramanath

  2. School of Computing Science, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC, Canada

    Mark S. Drew

Authors
  1. Rajeev Ramanath
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  2. Mark S. Drew
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Section Editor information

  1. No affiliation provided

    Todd Zickler

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Ramanath, R., Drew, M.S. (2020). Blackbody Radiation. In: Computer Vision. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03243-2_565-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03243-2_565-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-03243-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-03243-2

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Computer SciencesReference Module Computer Science and Engineering

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