4
Example
of the Stefan-Boltzmann law
•Suppose
a brown-out causes the temperature of a lamp filament to drop to 0.9 of its original value. By what factor does the light output of the lamp drop?
•Using
the Stefan-Boltzmann law (with the numerical value of s) we could have calculated how big (in m2) a light
filament would
have to be to emit 100 W of light, at any given temperature.
•We
could also find the size of a star, if we know how much energy that star emitted
From our text: Horizons, by Seeds