Thermal radiation

✎ This article/section is a stub — some half-sorted notes, not necessarily checked, not necessarily correct. Feel free to ignore, or tell me about it.

Thermal radiation

in the way that physics uses it refers to "if it is above 0 Kelvin then it emits some electromagnetism"

in an everyday sense we mostly think about the heat component

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_radiation

Incandescence is basically the same thing -- but zoomed in, caring only about the human-visible-light range of that EM emission.

In the context of lighting,

incandescent lightbulbs are wires that glow when given mains voltage, and continue glowing for a while.

it's mainly contrasted with luminescence, which is roughly the "light for any other reason" category (and contains a handful of specific reasons).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incandescence

Black-body radiation is also basically the same thing, or perhaps "thermal radiation's real-world math becomes easier if we add some assumptions like that it's not really interacting in other ways"

e.g. assuming a uniform temperature

e.g. assuming a uniform absorber of energy

(which also helps it have a smooth spectrum.)

Black body radiation also hints at that we're describing thing in space. Because in that case, a body is isolated, and the way we see it is affected largely by heat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-body_radiation

If you wanted a "all things that happen at high temperature" view, there are some further things to list, such as thermionic emission.