Wien's displacement law
Wien's displacement law states that the black body radiation curve for different temperatures peaks at a wavelength inversely proportional to the temperature. The shift of that peak is a direct consequence of the Planck radiation law which describes the spectral brightness of black body radiation as a function of wavelength at any given temperature. However it had been discovered by Wilhelm Wien several years before Max Planck developed that more general equation, and describes the entire shift of the spectrum of black body radiation toward shorter wavelengths as temperature increases.
Formally, Wien's displacement law states that the spectral radiance of black body radiation per unit wavelength, peaks at the wavelength λmax given by:
where T is the absolute temperature in kelvins. b is a constant of proportionality called Wien's displacement constant, equal to 2.8977729(17)×10−3 m⋅K, or more conveniently to obtain wavelength in micrometers, b ≈ 2900 μm·K. If one is considering the peak of black body emission per unit frequency or per proportional bandwidth, one must use a different proportionality constant. However the form of the law remains the same: the peak wavelength is inversely proportional to temperature (or the peak frequency is directly proportional to temperature).
Wien's displacement law may be referred to as "Wien's law", a term which is also used for the Wien approximation.
Wien's displacement law is relevant to some everyday experiences:
The law is named for Wilhelm Wien, who derived it in 1893 based on a thermodynamic argument. Wien considered adiabatic expansion of a cavity containing waves of light in thermal equilibrium. He showed that under slow expansion or contraction, the energy of light reflecting off the walls changes in exactly the same way as the frequency. A general principle of thermodynamics is that a thermal equilibrium state, when expanded very slowly stays in thermal equilibrium. The adiabatic principle allowed Wien to conclude that for each mode, the adiabatic invariant energy/frequency is only a function of the other adiabatic invariant, the frequency/temperature. A modern variant of Wien's derivation can be found in the textbook by Wannier.
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