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Planck's law of black body radiation


Planck's law describes the spectral density of electromagnetic radiation emitted by a black body in thermal equilibrium at a given temperature T. The law is named after Max Planck, who proposed it in 1900. It is a pioneering result of modern physics and quantum theory.

The spectral radiance of a body, Bν, describes the amount of energy it gives off as radiation of different frequencies. It is measured in terms of the power emitted per unit area of the body, per unit solid angle that the radiation is measured over, per unit frequency. Planck showed that the spectral radiance of a body for frequency ν at absolute temperature T is given by

where kB the Boltzmann constant, h the Planck constant, and c the speed of light in the medium, whether material or vacuum. The spectral radiance can also be measured per unit wavelength λ instead of per unit frequency. In this case, it is given by

The law may also be expressed in other terms, such as the number of photons emitted at a certain wavelength, or the energy density in a volume of radiation. The SI units of Bν are W·sr−1·m−2·Hz−1, while those of Bλ are W·sr−1·m−3.


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