Re:Why are some things darker when wet?
by boomboomsubban on Thursday January 09, 2020 @12:46PM
(#22003509)
Isn't hydrogen gas almost exclusively H2, giving it plenty of possible electrons to interact with photons?
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Re:Why are some things darker when wet?
by whatshisface on Thursday January 09, 2020 @12:52PM
(#22003573)
That's a good catch, but H2's spectral lines are still discrete. It's not that gasses can't absorb photons, it's that they can only do so at very specific frequencies.
To simplify the argument, you could use Helium instead. Here is a (discrete!) list of its spectral lines: https://physics.nist.gov/PhysRefData/Handbook/Tables/heliumt...
And here is a chart of its (continuous!) index of refraction: https://refractiveindex.info/?shelf=main&book=He&page=Mansfi...