|
A very hot
object, such as the filament of a light bulb, glows with a color
that depends on its temperature. Long before thermometers came into
use, people used color to judge the temperature of an object. The
traditional instructions for making a samurai sword, for instance,
call for quenching the sword when it glows with the color of the
morning sun. Today astronomers use color to estimate the temperature
of stars. Very hot stars appear blue-white and the coolest star
look reddish. Our own star, the sun, is a yellow-white star somewhere
in between these two extremes, with a temperature of about 6,000
K (5,700 C ).
|
|
