Name: 【TED-Ed】How quantum mechanics explains global warming - Lieven Scheire
Uploaded: 2014-11-19T03:58:54.000Z
Duration: 5 min 1 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

If you look closely at sunlight separated

you'll see dark gaps where bands of color went missing.

This is where we enter the quantum realm.

of possible energy levels for its electrons.

To shift its electrons from the ground state

a molecule needs to gain a certain amount of energy.

which comes in more energy levels than you could count.

Light consists of tiny particles called photons

Red light has lower energy and longer wavelengths.

Purple light has higher energy and shorter wavelengths.

Sunlight offers all the photons of the rainbow,

the photons that carry the exact amount of energy

If a photon carries too much or too little energy,

with any of the energy levels in visible light,

So, which photons does carbon dioxide prefer?

Carbon dioxide doesn't absorb light directly

One that doesn't appear to be emitting light at all:

it's because the Earth doesn't emit visible light.

including all of the colors of the rainbow,

is just a small part of the larger spectrum

It may seem strange to think of these things as light,

between visible light and other electromagnetic radiation.

In fact, it's a bit presumptuous to define

the term visible light by our own limitations.

After all, infrared light is visible to snakes,

and ultraviolet light is visible to birds.

it will emit more and more frequencies of infrared light,

and then, at a temperature of around 450 degrees Celsius,

its light will reach the visible spectrum.

with all of the frequencies of visible light.