Is anyone a physicist?

Is anyone out there a physicist and would care to answer a physics related question? It's about emission spectra.

Thanks! 

Let's give it a try...

I work in a high school and can pass on to a colleague if it's any help?!?!!!

That's me...

I read half of a Feynmen book once.

Ivandh answered it by PM a few days after I posted. Sorry! Although I enjoyed the Bugs Bunny cartoon. 

I watch a lot of Big Bang Theory... 

Equal to a whole Feynman book.

I read Surely You're Joking but there wasn't any physics in it other than the Feynman diagrams he painted on his van. (at least I think that was in that book, actually now I can't remember...) 

I'm sure his kids were the most popular in school, getting dropped off by the quarkmobile.

I am

what happened to prawn, I've been off for a while

Its very tragic... He was eaten...

such is the life aquatic.

I can clearly and quickly explain the actuality of "Relativity". I don't even need to be a physicist or waste time on Einstein's Theory.

Hello Rowley:

I would have loved to know what the question was and the answer that you were given. Wish you could post it. I love learning or reviewing things.

Thanks

Sure, DenverHigh. It's been several months, and I don't remember the question exactly. But I think I was pondering why cooler stars are red, and then yellow and eventually white. I was trying to relate color theory as it applies to thermodynamics. And my confusion was that I was thinking the color transition would be due to increased frequency vs the higher energy stars simply releasing more waves.

I used to belong to the amature astronomers group when I made the comment months. I was really interested in that subject. They have many members that are knowledgeable in Cosmology.

I have left that group and not much happens there.

A star starts growing by giving off the lowest energy light, which is red light. As it gets hotter, it then gets enough energy to emit yellow and eventually blue light, while at the same time still emitting the red light. The reason is that yellow and blue light takes more energy to emit than does red light, so a higher temperature is needed. So, as star heats up, it first turns red, then orange (red+yellow light), and finally white (red+yellow+blue looks white to the eye) and hotter.

IMHO

Indeed! I was trying to correlate increased energy with optics and not understanding why they weren't just getting bluer... 

(Although note that in the original post I mentioned emission spectra. I had recently read about the creation of heavier elements in hotter, denser stars. I was attempting to answer my own question, I think? Who knows. )

Thanks for your input!

I figured it was something like that considering that when steel is heated to workable temperatures for shaping, tempering, etc. It is bendable once red hot, very formable when yellow hot and is liquified when it is white hot. I will have to look up the correlation. I doubt it is coincidental. I vaguely remember in astronomy class that stars had a temperature to color correlation.

While I agree that all of the colors of the visible spectrum of light appear as white light, if you look at a flame from a cigarette lighter there is a progression starting with blue, the hottest part of the flame, then yellow as it gets cooler. While certain elements and compounds burn with different colors as in fireworks, it is hard to not possibly consider what each of these is made of and in what proportions....