Fraunhofer lines

Have you ever looked at a rainbow and seen different colors in it, like red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet? Well, when scientists look at the sunlight using special tools called spectroscopes, they see something similar. They see something called a spectrum, which is like a rainbow but instead of colors, it shows all the different colors that make up the sunlight.

But here's the interesting part: when scientists studied the sunlight spectrum, they noticed that there were some dark lines in it. These dark lines are called Fraunhofer lines, named after the person who discovered them, Joseph von Fraunhofer.

Each Fraunhofer line represents a specific color that is missing from the sunlight spectrum. But how did this happen? When the light from the sun travels through the Earth's atmosphere, certain atoms and molecules in the air absorb some of the light. This absorption creates the Fraunhofer lines because the specific colors that are absorbed by the atoms and molecules are missing from the sunlight spectrum.

Scientists can use these Fraunhofer lines to learn more about the elements and molecules in the Earth's atmosphere. By studying which colors are missing, they can determine which atoms and molecules are absorbing those colors. It's like a special code that helps scientists understand the makeup of the air we breathe.

So, in summary, Fraunhofer lines are dark lines in the sunlight spectrum that represent specific colors missing from the sunlight because they are absorbed by certain atoms and molecules in the Earth's atmosphere. Scientists use these lines to learn more about the elements and molecules in the atmosphere.