this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] Bubs@lemmy.zip 86 points 8 months ago (5 children)

1000°c seems accurate:

Fun little science fact: Heated objects glow the same colors no matter what they are made of. It's called Black Body Radiation. The color chart shows what temperatures correspond with various "colors" of glow.

[–] Natanael@infosec.pub 28 points 8 months ago

Heated objects glow the same colors no matter what they are made of

True only if light emissions aren't dominated by chemical effects or filtered by structural effects. Plenty of materials burn at different colors. Although if you wait out the chemical reactions and keep it heated, it does eventually end up with just blackbody radiation too 🤷

[–] icelimit@lemmy.ml 10 points 8 months ago

But corrected by emissivity factor. Emissivity factor is also not constant, and changes as both a function of material and temperature. Probably associated with band gap fluctuating wrt. Temperature

[–] Gladaed@feddit.org 6 points 8 months ago

Unless it is a gray body. For somewhat accurate measurements you must do math.

[–] Agent641@lemmy.world 5 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Aluminium doesn't glow, even when molten though?

[–] i_love_FFT@jlai.lu 14 points 8 months ago

That simply means it must melt below 600°C.

A quick wiki check says it melts at 660. I guess if you're in a really dark room, you could see the glow.

[–] Gladaed@feddit.org 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Real bodies are gray, not black.

[–] BreadOven@lemmy.world 5 points 8 months ago

All bodies matter.

[–] BurgerBaron@piefed.social 3 points 8 months ago

Eventually will glow human eye visible if you keep heating it past useful temperatures. 1000'C+ starts getting red hot.

Doesn’t emit light as readily as iron does, especially with iron’s oxide layer building up when heated.

[–] Nikls94@lemmy.world 3 points 8 months ago

Which makes iron a suitable substitute for tungsten at 3000 C