Frequency

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Frequency refers to how often an event occurs. High frequency events, like waves, are measured in Hertz. Lower frequency events, like comets, are often referred to by terms like "twice a century" or even how many years until an event reoccurs. Events like comets happen with predictable regularity, but a "once in 100-year flood" does not refer to frequency, rather statistical probability (every year there is a 1/100 chance that the flood would occur).

Figure 1. The electromagnetic spectrum:[1] more energy corresponds to shorter wavelength and higher frequency since all three quantities are closely related. The radiant energy of a photon can span many orders of magnitude (a factor of 1024!), but there's only a very small portion that is visible, as shown here.

For Further Reading

References

  1. P. Ronan, Gringer. (2013, February 19). EM spectrum revised [Online]. Available: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/30/EM_spectrumrevised.png