College of Liberal Arts & Sciences
6B10.25 - Wien's Law - Planetary Sunlight Intensity
See also 6B10.25 in Astronomy.
Put the 1000 watt bulb on one Variac, the 100 watt bulb on another Variac and the 1/4th watt bulb on a 'D' cell battery. Turn them all on and observe the relative intensities. The scale of these intensities:
Intensity of sunlight as seen from Mercury = 1000 watts.
Intensity of sunlight as seen from Earth = 100 watts.
Intensity of sunlight as seen from Pluto = 1/4th watt.
- Chirstopher Sirola, "Stellar photometry in an introductory physics lab (or, translating flux into magnitudes)", TPT, Vol. 61, #4, Apr. 2023, p. 310.
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