Thermal radiation explained:
Thermal radiation is electromagnetic radiation generated by the thermal motion of atoms in matter. How does a bouncing atom create such high frequency radiation in optical?
When heated, the atoms bounce around hitting each other. The measured distance between some atoms in black body thermal radiators can be on order of only a few angstroms. The frequency of the thermal radiation emitted would be dependent on how fast and how far one atom has to travel before it gets nearer the adjacent atoms magnetic field and bounces back. The two recoil and create the moving magnetic field, which in turn creates the electromagnetic wave and thus; the thermal radiation.
Seeing as the space between atoms can be only as little as one tenths of nm and that black body radiation peaks in optical in the hundreds of nm wavelengths, then it follows that any motion of an atom in the heated blackbody material would mean its oscillation frequency around the optical and infrared frequencies can be easily accounted for. By virtue of the very short distance the atom has to move between its succesive ‘bounces’. An analogy is if one bounces a ball at a constant speed between two walls x distance apart, then at the same speed that balls “bounce” frequency will increase the shorter the distance ‘x’ is between the walls.
On a microscopic scale, heat conduction occurs as hot, rapidly moving or vibrating atoms and molecules interact with neighboring atoms and molecules, transferring some of their energy (heat) to these neighboring particles.
