Solar blackbody spectrum and the eye’s sensitivity

Art Hobson

Citation: American Journal of Physics 71, 295 (2003); doi: 10.1119/1.1545762

View online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1119/1.1545762
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 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Letters are selected for their expected interest for our readers. Some letters are sent to reviewers for
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published.

SOLAR BLACKBODY
SPECTRUM AND THE EYE’S
SENSITIVITY
Virginia Trimble’s wonderful article on
cosmology 共December 2002, pp. 1175–
1183兲 states that ‘‘any blackbody source at
a temperature near that of the sun...is bound
to look white. This is not a coincidence, but
a product of evolution; our eyes are most
sensitive at the peak of the solar spectrum.’’
I had believed this for years, until I read
Bernard Soffer and David Lynch’s article in
AJP, November 1999, pp. 946 –953. They
show that the quoted statement is mislead-
ing and erroneous, because the spectral ra-
diance versus wavelength graph is a density
distribution function whose peak position
changes when plotted in terms of a differ-
ent variable such as frequency, while the
eye’s sensitivity is an ordinary function.
Furthermore, ‘‘the eye does not appear to
be optimized for detection of the available
sunlight. ...It is likely that we are viewing
the world with a souvenir of the human
evolutionary voyage.’’
Art Hobson
University of Arkansas
Fayetteville, Arkansas 72701
Electronic mail: ahobson@uark.edu
AUTHOR’S RESPONSE
Professor Hobson is, of course, right
about the details of this issue. But what I
共and many others兲 have always meant by
the broad remark is that there are good rea-
sons that we do not have eyes that are pri-
marily sensitive to far IR, UV, mm, radio,
or x-ray emission. Although astronomers
sometimes speak of the sun as belonging to
a category of ‘‘yellow’’ stars, people who
measure color for a living 共for example, my
father was a chemist specializing in color-
forming materials兲 define ‘‘white’’ as the
appearance of things like clean paper in
full, clear sunlight.
Virginia Trimble
Department of Physics and Astronomy
University of California
Irvine, California 92697
GATEWAYS INTO
ELECTRONICS
In the review of my book, Gateways into
Electronics,1 that appeared in the May
2001 issue of AJP,2 the reviewer ponders at
length about its suitability for his students
at UC, Berkeley and decides that Gateways
is not for them. This choice is of course his
prerogative. He does, however, make a
statement to which I would like to respond,
namely, that Gateways is not suitable for an
introductory course.
As I wrote in the Preface, the chapters in
Gateways are of two distinct types: elemen-
tary chapters that deal with standard topics
such as circuit theory and transistor ampli-
fiers, and more advanced chapters that pro-
vide the mathematical and physical under-
pinning for the elementary chapters or deal
with complementary topics such as trans-
mission lines and signal recovery. For ex-
ample, Chapter 1 discusses simple linear
systems to the extent required in subse-
quent elementary chapters and involves
only complex numbers and linear differen-
tial equations, whereas Chapter 2 is a full-
blown exposition of generalized functions
and integral transforms that leads to the
convolution theorem for linear systems and
Shannon’s sampling theorem. Chapter 2 is
intended for those who might eventually
find it of interest, but in a first reading, or if
only an introductory treatment is desired, it
can be skipped or postponed with no loss of
continuity.
Gateways has its origins in an introduc-
tory course for students straight out of high
school, so that although it is true that the
text has become more mathematical and
now has juniors in physics preferably in
mind, its thrust has not changed and the
elementary chapters remain, as they were at
the outset, quite accessible to beginners.
1
Peter C. Dunn, Gateways into Electronics
共Wiley, New York, 2000兲. A brief description
and a table of contents are available at
具www.amazon.com典.
2
Joel Fajans, review of Ref. 1, Am. J. Phys. 69,
621 共2001兲.
Peter C. Dunn
13A Ila Road
Saugus, Massachusetts 01906
Electronic mail: pcdunn@alum.mit.edu

295 Am. J. Phys. 71 共4兲, April 2003 http://ojps.aip.org/ajp/ © 2003 American Association of Physics Teachers 295
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