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Explorations an Introduction to Astronomy Thomas T. Arny | ||||||||
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Chapter 3, Figure 9
Figure
3.9
An atom can absorb light, using the light's energy to lift an electron from a lower to a higher orbit. To be absorbed, the energy of the light's photons must equal the energy difference between the atom's electron orbits. In this example, the green light's energy matches the energy difference, but the red and blue light's energy does not. Therefore only the green is absorbed.
