white light/black light

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chicago88

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conceptually speaking, what is the difference? i always get them confused and now i don't even get where they are different.


thank you in advance!

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lol, thanks ;-)

maybe i should be more specific..


white light is all visible colors combined..

black light is the absence of all the colors.. but also via the combination of all colors?

is this an accurate description or no? b/c if it is, then how do you differentiate between emitted/absorbed light and black light
 
'black light' is mainly a colloquial term, as is 'white light.' neither of these is particularly relevant to the MCAT. in reality, there really can be no 'black light," either visible spectrum EM waves or invisible spectrum EM waves.
 
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ok.. so i have a tbr physics question from the optics section.

it says that the reason that we see different colors from the sun is because the atmosphere essentially acts like a polarizer blocking out certain clolors, if we were to remove atmosphere what would light coming from the sun appear as...?



it had both white light and black light as the answer choices. i reasoned it'd be white light.. but the answer was actually black..

which is why i got confused, because white light is essentially all the colors -- and that is why i thought it would be that... how so is it black? (and how would they be different in this case)
 
did the question/passage itself define for you what white/black lights are? what i'm guessing is that they expect you to know the ozone layer is significant UV barrier. without the atmosphere, we'd be bombarded by UV spectrum, the domain of 'black light'
 
If you mean question 43 from TBR Ch10, then it asked about color of the sky. Not the color of the sun. The main visible wavelength of the sun is close to yellow and that will not change. Without the atmosphere the sky will be black, since there will be no reflection/dispersion/polarization etc. Term "Black light" is not used in physics. In other areas it sometimes used as a jargon for UV light, but not for this question.
 
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