Since it’s on the EM spectrum? If not, how are the wavelengths of visible light not toxic, but other wavelengths of the same spectrum are? Like Gamma radiation or X-rays or UV light. How is the toxicity of Gamma waves different than that of micro-waves (they cook food after all) or radio-waves?
How do these forms of radiation differ from the radiation clouds that nuclear plants release during a meltdown?
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MidAtlantian2 - said
May 23 2011 @ 17:51
You can consider light as particles of energy called photons. When you look at the EM spectrum, the photons of each frequency have a different energy.
In a way, you can think of them as being similar to the way different elements each have a different mass. This is just as a way to get an idea about them. Photons do not really have any mass at all.
You can think of radio waves like ping-pong balls, as ultraviolet like hollow aluminum balls, and as x-rays as steel balls.
As I said, they do NOT have any mass at all, but they do have much different energies, and it is these difference in energies that make one harmless and one hazardous, that result in one being a ‘cream-puff’, and the other packing a wallop.
The really dangerous radiation emitted in power plants that people worry most about, is not electromagnetic radiation at all, but is radioactive material: the large atoms of elements that have very large atomic weights. These atoms tend to split and emit EM radiation of very high energies, so the dangerous "radiation" is of atoms that create dangerous photons of energy.
? - said
May 23 2011 @ 17:51
Visible light is radiant energy.