One intuitive and not very precise, but still demonstrating the idea, and a second one, more precise and scientific.
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The first answer uses again an analogy: A boy can easily run when it is rainy. But a mosquito will never fly when it is rainy. Because the size of a mosquito is roughly the same as the size of a rain drop.
If a mosquito entered into the rain, the first few drops would knock the mosquito down to the mud. On the other hand, since the size of a boy is much much bigger than the size of a rain drop, it is easy for a boy to run on the street even if it is rainy. Now I show you how to use the above example in the case of the waves and the wall.
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What do you compare in this case? You compare the size of the waves and a typical size of atoms in the wall.
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The size of the waves is characterized by their wavelength. I am telling you, radio waves are huge waves, their wavelengths are much much bigger then the size of atoms in the wall. According to the above analogy, that is why they go easily through the wall. As a boy did in the rain.
On the other side, light waves are very very small waves, their size wavelength is comparable to the size of atoms in the wall. And that is why they are not able to go through the wall.
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As a mosquito cannot fly when it is rainy. The radio and light waves are part of the electromagnetic spectrum, but are very different. Radio waves are much bigger than light waves in terms of their wavelength. Radio waves are bigger then the size of atoms in a wall, that is why they go through, while light is a small wave and cannot get through the wall. Does this make sense to you? Before I give you a more precise answer, let us examine what you said.
It matters, what the wall is made from, what kinds of atoms and molecules are its constituents. Also it is very important HOW these atoms in the wall are tight together. As you know, every atom has a shell of electrons. There are two main points that should be emphasized about the different types of electromagnetic radiation radio, infrared, visible, ultraviolet, x-ray, gamma ray:. Much of the science of astronomy deals with the study of how light is generated and emitted by a source, what happens to the photons of light from the source as they travel from the source to an observer, and how the observer detects those photons.
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Let's consider the second of those three points—what types of material can block photons of light from reaching us? If you consider only optical light, then you will probably say that light can penetrate glass, air, and water, but light easily gets blocked by solids, like plastics and metals, or perhaps the clouds in the sky. If you notice in this video, IR light behaves very differently from visible light. While visible light gets blocked by smoke, an IR camera can penetrate smoke to see a fireman in a smoke-filled room.
Using visible light cameras, you could easily film someone swimming in a pool of water, however, water blocks IR light, so you would not be able to see the swimmer underwater with an IR camera.
Radio Waves to Gamma-rays
The same things goes for glass—while visible light easily penetrates a plate of glass, if you put a person behind a glass window, the person would be invisible to an IR camera. My favorite demonstration is the black plastic bag. Obviously, we cannot see a person's hand if they put it inside a black plastic bag, but an IR camera can! As mentioned above, Earth's atmosphere which we usually think of as transparent is actually only transparent to certain wavelengths of light.
This is illustrated in this cartoon below:. All visible light penetrates the atmosphere, most radio light penetrates the atmosphere, and some IR light passes through the atmosphere.
Radio Waves to Gamma-rays | Astronomy Planets, Stars, Galaxies, and the Universe
In contrast, our atmosphere blocks most ultraviolet light UV and all X-rays and gamma-rays from reaching the surface of Earth. Because of this, astronomers can only study these kinds of light using detectors mounted on weather balloons, in rockets, or in Earth-orbiting satellites. If you study the plot from Infrared Windows a NASA Web site , you will see that you can represent this idea of windows in a more rigorous way.
You can plot how opaque the atmosphere is or equivalently, what percentage of photons are blocked by the atmosphere as a function of wavelength. Skip to main content. Radio Waves to Gamma-rays Print When I use the term light , you are used to thinking of the light emitted by a bulb that you can sense with your eyes, which we now know consists of many wavelengths colors of light from red to blue.
The entire electromagnetic spectrum is presented from the longest wavelengths of light radio waves to the shortest wavelengths of light gamma-rays at the following NASA website: The Electromagnetic Spectrum That site is written at a level appropriate for younger readers, but they do a very good job of summarizing the different regions of the EM spectrum.