What is the energy of photons with wavelength 600 nm? People have proposed to us

Question

What is the energy of photons with wavelength 600 nm? People have proposed to use a "solar sail" to help move spacecraft to other planets. Assuming sunlight (in space) has a wavelength of 600 nm (Sunlight really has a broad band of wavelength but for his calculation we will assume the sunlight to have a wavelength 600nm) how much momentum will the sunlight impart on a solar sail (per cm^2) if the sunlight has a total energy of 0.13 W/cm^2 How many 600 nm photons (cm^2/s) are there in a 0.13 W/cm^2 beam of 600 nm light?

Explanation / Answer

a) Energy of phtoton, E = h*c/lamda

= 6.626*10^-34*3*10^8/(600*10^-9)

= 3.313*10^-19 J

b) momentum impoarted by phtons = I/c

= 0.13/(3*10^8)

= 4.33*10^-10 kg.m/s

c) let N is the no of phtotns incident on the given surface per cm^2, N = E/E_phton

= 0.13/(3.313*10^-19)

= 3.92*10^17

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