What is Wien’s Law?

Wien’s Law is about how hot things glow and what color they appear based on their temperature.

Imagine you have a pot of water on the stove. When it's just starting to heat up, it might look almost clear, not very bright or colorful. But as it gets hotter and boils, it starts to shimmer with a white light. If you take that same idea and apply it to stars, like our Sun, Wien’s Law helps explain why some stars are blue and others are red.

Think of a fire. A regular campfire is orange or yellow, not too hot. But if you have a really hot object, like the inside of a toaster, it glows white or even blue. That’s because hotter things emit light at shorter wavelengths, which we see as blue or white.

Wien’s Law gives us a simple way to figure out how hot something is just by looking at its color. If you know the color of a star, you can use this rule to guess how hot it is, like solving a puzzle with light and heat!