ABSTRACT
Light and your car Nearly every car lover has had a visual experience that has evoked strong emotion. Perhaps it was that moment when you saw your dream car painted flawlessly in your dream color at an auto show or when you witnessed that amazing burnout on the drag strip with six-foot flames bursting from the tailpipes. Our ability to experience these eye-catching sensations is driven by the ability of our eyes to convert colors of light, a type of radiant energy, into electrical signals that our brain can process and use to render an image. Sight is based directly on the interaction of light with color-sensitive chemicals in our retinas. Likewise, the interaction of light and matter is responsible for the myriad paint colors available and for the operation of high-intensity discharge lamps that make it safe to drive at night. Yet light-matter interactions are also responsible for breakdown of wax on your car, can potentially damage the paint, lead to yellowing and bleaching of plastics, and cause stiffening or cracking of rubber and plastic. The interaction of light and matter is also a fundamental component of modern chemistry, serving as the primary means chemists have to identify materials and their compositions, study molecular motion, and track the progress of chemical reactions. In this chapter, we introduce the basic concepts necessary to understand light-matter interactions and use them to understand the various ways that light plays a role in the properties of your vehicle.
