BIOL 1000 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Bacteriorhodopsin, Electromagnetic Spectrum, Halobacterium

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3 Feb 2016
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Light serves two important functions for life on earth. First, it is a source of energy that directly or indirectly sustains all organisms. Second, light provides organism with information about the physical world that surrounds them. Light is most commonly defined as the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that humans can detect with their eyes (400nm to 700nm). It"s composed of a stream of energy particles called photons, and is best understood as a wave of photons (wave-particle duality). The longer the wavelength of the light, the lower the energy is. Light interacts with matter; when a photon hits it can be reflected off an object, transmitted through it, or it can be absorbed by it. To be used by an organism it must be absorbed. Absorption occurs when the photon is transferred to an electron within a molecule, thus exciting the electron and moving it from its ground state to a higher energy level (excited state).

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