File talk:Spectral Power Distributions.png

Latest comment: 10 years ago by JDoolin

Why is there no information about the data used to make these plots? Zueignung (talk) 23:22, 1 September 2012 (UTC)Reply

Isn't 5000 Kelvin close to the temperature of the sun? I thought the main idea behind using fluorescents instead of incandescents was that they were cooler! JDoolin (talk) 12:41, 22 February 2014 (UTC)Reply

The 5000 K refers to the "color temperature". The color spectrum of a 5000 K white light source is somewhat similar to the color of a 5000 K traditional incandescent light. --Rubik's Cube (talk) 16:01, 23 March 2014 (UTC)Reply
Thanks. I think I am understanding better. It has no vertical scale, so it only shows proportion. A power distribution has arbitrary units, depending on the surface area, though perhaps a surface intensity distribution could be given explicit units, because the surface area could be divided out. An actual 5000 Kelvin body would have a Planck distribution with it's peak wavelength according to Wein's Law. The effective temperature of this distribution is far, far lower than the color temperature. In a Planck Distribution, the color temperature is the same as the effective temperature. But using halogens and such, you can get high color temperatures with low effective temperatures. JDoolin (talk) 14:39, 28 April 2014 (UTC)Reply