WILHELM WIEN

PREPARED BY:
JANNAT MANCHANDA

EARLY YEARS
Wilhelm Carl Werner Otto Fritz Franz Wien
was a german physicst born on January 13,
1864 at Fischhausen, in East Prussia. He was the
son of the landowner Carl Wien, and seemed
destined for the life of a gentleman farmer, but
an economic crisis and his own secret sense of
vocation led him to University studies.

EDUCATION

In 1879, Wien went to school in Rastenburg and from

1880-1882 he attended the city school ofHeidelberg.
In 1882 he attended theUniversity Of Gottingenand
the University of Berlin. From 1883-85, he worked in
the laboratory ofHermann von Helmholtzand, in 1886,
he received hisPh.D.with a thesis on the diffraction of
light upon metals and on the influence of various
materials upon thecolourof refracted light. From 1896
to 1899, Wien lectured atRWTH Aachen University. In
1900 he went to theUniversity Of Wurzburgand
became successor ofWilhelm Conrad Rontgen.

CAREER
In 1896 Wien empirically determined a distribution
law ofblackbody radiation, later named after
him:Wiens Law.Max Planck, who was a colleague of
Wien's, did not believe in empirical laws, so using
electromagnetism and thermodynamics, he proposed
a theoretical basis for Wien's law, which became
theWien-Planck Law. However, Wien's law was only
valid at high frequencies, and underestimated the
radiancy at low frequencies. Planck corrected the
theory and proposed what is now calledPlancks Law,
which led to the development ofQuantum Theory.

 Wien's other empirical formulation maxT=constant,

calledWiens Displacement Law, is still very useful,
as it relates the peak wavelength emitted by a body
(max), to the temperature of the body (T)
While studying streams ofIonized gas, Wien, in 1898,
identified a positive particle equal in mass to
theHydrogen atom. Wien, with this work, laid the
foundation ofmass spectrometry. J.J. Thomsonrefined
Wien's apparatus and conducted further experiments
in 1913 then, after work byErnest Rutherfordin 1919,
Wien's particle was accepted and named theproton.
During April 1913, Wien was a lecturer atColumbia
University.

WIENS DISPLACEMENT LAW

Wien's displacement lawstates that
thewavelengthdistribution ofthermal
radiationfrom ablack bodyat any temperature
has essentially the same shape as the
distribution at any other temperature, except
that each wavelength is displaced on the graph.
Apart from an overallT3multiplicative factor,
the average thermal energyin each mode with
frequency only depends on the ratio /T.
Restated in terms of the wavelength =c/,
the distributions at corresponding wavelengths
are related, where corresponding wavelengths
are at locations proportional to 1/T.Blackbody
Radiationapproximates to Wien's law at high
frequency.

 There is an inverse relationship between the

wavelength of the peak of the emission of a black body
and itstemperature when expressed as a function of
wavelength, and this less powerful consequence is
often also called Wien's displacement .
maxT=constant
where maxis the peak wavelength,Tis the absolute
temperature of the black body, andbis aconstant of
proportionalitycalledWien's displacement constant,
equal to2.8977685(51)103mK

EXAMPLES
Light from the Sun:

The effective temperature of the Sun is 5778 K.

Peak emission at a wavelength of 2.90 million nm K/ 5778 K = 502 nm i.e. wavelength of

green light, and it is near the peak sensitivity of the human eye.The claim is then made
that the human eye evolved to be most sensitive to the peak emission from the Sun. In
fact, Wien's law says that the Sun's peak emissionper unit wavelengthis at 502 nm. When
the spectrum is reckoned per frequency interval, the Sun's peak emission appears at a
frequency of 3.43 x 1014Hz; this means that the peak emissionper unit frequencyis at
3.43 x 1014Hz, which corresponds to a wavelength of 883 nm and is well into the infrared.
That is, the apparent "peak" of the spectrum is significantly affected by the bookkeeping
convention by which one describes the spectrum. (Evolution of the eye was more likely
influenced by the spectral absorption properties of water than by the Sun's spectrum.)

 Light from incandescent bulbs and fires: Alightbulbhas

a glowing wire with a somewhat lower temperature,
resulting in yellow light, and something that is "red hot"
is again a little less hot. It is easy to calculate that a
wood fire at 1500 K puts out peak radiation at 3 million
nm K /1500 K = 2000nm = 20,000. This is far more
energy in the infrared than in the visible band, which
ends about 7500 .
Radiation from mammals and the living human body:
Mammals at roughly 300 K emit peak radiation at 3
thousand m K / 300 K = 10 m, in the far infrared. This
is therefore the range of infrared wavelengths thatpit
vipersnakes and passive IR cameras must sense.

ACHIEVEMENTS
He won the 1911 Nobel Prize in physics for his
discoveries regarding the laws governing the
radiation of heat. Wien also studied cathode
rays and X rays.
In 1892 received thevenia legandiat the
University of Berlin with a work on the
localization of energy.