In this video, we're going to talk a little bit about the electromagnetic spectrum. But first, it's important to note that sunlight will travel millions of miles all the way from our sun to our planet Earth as photons, and photons can be defined as particles of light that have really high kinetic energy and can travel in waves that have different wavelengths. And so, the shorter the wavelength is on the photon, the higher the kinetic energy the photon will have. Chloroplasts have the amazing ability to be able to capture the energy that is contained within a photon. We'll be able to talk more about how the chloroplasts capture this energy as we move forward in our course in different videos. Now the electromagnetic spectrum is really just referring to the range of all possible wavelengths that a photon can have. And so, what you'll notice is down below in our image, we're showing you the entire electromagnetic spectrum, the range of all possible wavelengths a photon can have. And what you'll notice is that the wavelengths can be very short, and they can also be much longer wavelengths as well. Now visible light is really just a small fraction or a narrow segment of light or a narrow segment of the entire electromagnetic spectrum. And so, visible light is the narrow segment of light that is actually visible to our eyes. And so, this particular wavelengths of light called visible light is what our eyes are actually able to detect as colors.
Let's take a look at our image down below at the electromagnetic spectrum to get a better idea of this. And so what you'll see is at the top here, we have the entire electromagnetic spectrum that ranges from gamma rays that have really, really short wavelengths, all the way to radio waves that have really, really long wavelengths. It's important to note that right here in the middle, we're showing you the visible light. And visible light is, once again, a very small fraction of the entire electromagnetic spectrum. And so, what you'll notice is that visible light ranges from wavelengths of light that are about 380 nanometers, that's what this nm is, all the way up to about 750 nanometers. This is what is considered the visible wavelengths of light. And this is how we perceive colors within this visible light range.
What's important to note about the entire electromagnetic spectrum is, once again there are waves of different lengths. We have shorter wavelengths over here on the left-hand side, and shorter wavelengths actually correspond with higher energy. But as you move from the left to the right, notice that the wavelengths get longer and longer. And so down below, notice that as we go from the left to the right, we start to get longer wavelengths. But longer wavelengths actually correspond with lower energy. This here, really concludes our introduction to the electromagnetic spectrum. Moving forward, we're going to be focusing mainly on this visible light, the small range within the electromagnetic spectrum that is actually visible to our eyes. So we'll focus mainly on that. And, we'll be able to get some practice applying these concepts as we move forward in our course. So I'll see you all in our next video.
