the.com/spectroscopy
Reading the autobiography light writes in colors before it dies in your eyes.
means The science of splitting light from matter into its component wavelengths to figure out what that matter is made of, how hot it is, or how it's moving.
from Built from Latin 'spectrum' (an appearance or image, from 'specere,' to look) and Greek 'skopein' (to examine). The word crystallized in the 1800s once scientists like Bunsen and Kirchhoff realized that every element burns with its own signature set of colored lines — a chemical fingerprint written in light, legible only once you split it apart with a prism.
- origin
- Fraunhofer counted dark lines in sunlight, 1814
- range
- identifies elements in stars light-years away
- principle
- every atom burns its own barcode
- use case
- found helium on the sun before earth