Light sources

‘Light’ refers to the broad range of the electromagnetic spectrum, which includes visible light and invisible light, which means invisible to our vision for example radio waves, microwaves, infrared, ultraviolet, X-rays, and gamma rays. These different types of light are used in everyday life, however. For example, airport scanners use X-rays to inspect the contents of your suitcase, microwaves are used for cooking, lasers are used for medical procedures, such as eye surgery. Likewise, the right kind of light and the right equipment can help us see things in much finer detail than the human eye could possibly make out. 

Light sources-

So, as first we have already discussed what we mean by a light source, now we will take a look at different types of light sources, light sources used and light sources Venn diagram. 

Light Sources-

(I) Natural Sources: Our most important natural source of sunlight. Most of the natural light we get comes from the sun; moonlight sunlight from the face of the moon. The distant stars emit very little light.

(II) Artificial Sources: There are several ways to produce synthetic light. Generally, a synthetic light source can be divided into three categories, namely.

(i) Hot springs: Examples of hot springs are incandescent lamps, burning candles, etc. When an object is heated to light or incandescent, it emits all visible wavelengths and a large amount of infrared radiation. Therefore, as manufacturers of visible radiation (i.e., light energy), they have lower efficiency. In general, the efficiency of such light sources improves as the operating temperature rises.

(ii) Gas Extraction Sources: Examples of gas extraction sources are neon lamps, sodium lamps, etc. In this case, light is obtained by keeping the electric field at low pressure. Such a source emits only a few wavelengths. The colour and intensity of the light depends on the condition of the gas or vapour only. It may be noted that when light is emitted by a hot source, the spectrum persists. However, when light is obtained from gas emissions, the spectrum does not continue i.e., contains one or more coloured lines. 

(iii) Luminescent Sources: A common example of such a source is the fluorescent tube. A fluorescent tube consists of a thin wall glass tube with fluorescent material enclosed inside the tube. Electric current is stored in vapour at low pressure. It emits visible radiation as well as ultraviolet (invisible) rays. Fluorescent material absorbs ultraviolet radiation and releases it into long wavelengths of visible spectrum.

Light sources uses-

1. Photosynthesis of food composition

Energy from light is captured as chemical energy and is stored as food. As you may know, this happens through a process called photosynthesis.

Photosynthesis is a concept in biology where food is composed of green leaves during the presence of light.

Light is the only source of food for all living things on earth.

Except for a few chemotrophic bacteria? Nearly all living things depend on it for food and energy.

Plants and other autotrophs combine their nutrients with light. When it falls on the leaves and other green areas on the plants, they are trapped.

This confined energy is converted into energy in the form of carbohydrates. 

2. Visual

All animals, birds, can see things around because of the presence of eyes.

But without light, these eyes would be useless. The eyes receive visual cues of objects and send information to the brain.

From this visual information, we understand things. So, we can see that in the dark, we can see nothing.

In addition, it is responsible for the colours.

This whole world looks beautiful because of its colours. But in the dark, we do not see the colours. This is because all the colours in this earth are only possible because of the light.

The beam of light has many spectra. Each spectrum is coloured and these are more commonly called VIBGYOR.

In full form, of course

Violet,

Indigo

Blue

Green

Yellow

Orange

Red

Also these are the same colours which we see in the rainbow, as white light consists of all these colours.

Light Venn Diagram- 

A light Venn diagram shows us how different light sources have similarities and differences between them, as it is a pictorial representation, it gets easy to interpret the info,also it is very easy to learn and draw it by ourselves. 

Different colour light sources and the result when they get combined 

Venn diagram showing light sources from different and common origin

Conclusion–

So, in this article we have learned the meaning of light sources, their different types such as natural, artificial etc.

We have also learned about their uses such as in X-Rays, for our vision, cooking etc. Last but not the least we read about Venn diagram and how useful they are for us.

As we have read about all these things about light, however the most important thing is if we haven’t had light in our lives then we wouldn’t be here having all the things like entertainment, medical advancement and most important thing, our vision.