Wien approximation

"Wien's distribution law" redirects here. Not to be confused with Wien's displacement law.
Comparison of Wien’s curve and the Planck curve

Wien's approximation (also sometimes called Wien's law or the Wien distribution law) is a law of physics used to describe the spectrum of thermal radiation (frequently called the blackbody function). This law was first derived by Wilhelm Wien in 1896.[1][2][3] The equation does accurately describe the short-wavelength (high-frequency) spectrum of thermal emission from objects, but it fails to accurately fit the experimental data for long-wavelength (low-frequency) emission.[3]

  1. ^ Wien, W. (1897). "On the division of energy in the emission-spectrum of a black body" (PDF). Philosophical Magazine. Series 5. 43 (262): 214–220. doi:10.1080/14786449708620983.
  2. ^ Mehra, J.; Rechenberg, H. (1982). The Historical Development of Quantum Theory. Vol. 1. Springer-Verlag. Chapter 1. ISBN 978-0-387-90642-3.
  3. ^ a b Bowley, R.; Sánchez, M. (1999). Introductory Statistical Mechanics (2nd ed.). Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0-19-850576-1.