Lesson Plan: Blackbody Radiation Physics • Third Year of Secondary School
This lesson plan includes the objectives, prerequisites, and exclusions of the lesson teaching students how to describe the change of an ideal blackbody’s color with temperature and explain how this shows the quantisation of light.
Objectives
Students will be able to
- define and recognize cavity modes for electromagnetic waves,
- compare graphical representations of radiation spectra corresponding to quantised and continuous distributions of wavelengths of blackbody radiation,
- use the formula to relate the energy, frequency, and number of quanta emitted by a blackbody.
Prerequisites
Students should already be familiar with
- representations of amplitude, frequency, and wavelength of electromagnetic waves and the mathematical relationship between frequency and wavelength, ,
- representations of standing waves,
- qualitative representations of Wein’s law, particularly graphs of electromagnetic radiation spectral distribution.
Exclusions
Students will not cover
- calculations using Wein’s law,
- electron energy level transitions,
- particulate qualities of light quanta.
