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The extinction law's primary application is in chemical analysis, where it underlies the Beer–Lambert law, commonly called Beer's law. Beer's law states that a beam of visible light passing through a chemical solution of fixed geometry experiences absorption proportional to the solute concentration .
The absorbance of a material that has only one absorbing species also depends on the pathlength and the concentration of the species, according to the Beer–Lambert law =, where ε is the molar absorption coefficient of that material; c is the molar concentration of those species; ℓ is the path length.
whose solution is known as Beer–Lambert law and has the form = /, where x is the distance traveled by the beam through the target, and I 0 is the beam intensity before it entered the target; ℓ is called the mean free path because it equals the mean distance traveled by a beam particle before being stopped.
This may be related to other properties of the object through the Beer–Lambert law. Precise measurements of the absorbance at many wavelengths allow the identification of a substance via absorption spectroscopy, where a sample is illuminated from one side, and the intensity of the light that exits from the sample in every direction is measured.
A colorimeter is a device used in colorimetry that measures the absorbance of particular wavelengths of light by a specific solution. [1] [2] It is commonly used to determine the concentration of a known solute in a given solution by the application of the Beer–Lambert law, which states that the concentration of a solute is proportional to the absorbance.
When an electromagnetic wave travels through a medium in which it gets attenuated (this is called an "opaque" or "attenuating" medium), it undergoes exponential decay as described by the Beer–Lambert law. However, there are many possible ways to characterize the wave and how quickly it is attenuated.
This absorbance value can then be used to determine the concentration of a given element (or atoms) within the sample. The relationship between the concentration of atoms, the distance the light travels through the collection of atoms, and the portion of the light absorbed is given by the Beer–Lambert law.
Beer–Lambert law: in optics, the empirical relationship of the absorption of light to the properties of the material through which the light is traveling. Independently discovered (in various forms) by Pierre Bouguer in 1729, Johann Heinrich Lambert in 1760 and August Beer in 1852.