What is Radiation? How Energy is Transferred Through Radiation
Radiation modes of heat transmission. In physics, radiation is a process in which energetic particles or energy or waves travel through a medium or space. There are two distinct types of radiation; ionizing and non-ionizing. Radiation with sufficiently high energy can ionize atoms. Most often, this occurs when an electron is stripped from an electron shell, which leaves the atom with a net positive charge. The energy of non-ionizing radiation is less and instead of producing charged ions when passing through matter, the electromagnetic radiation has only sufficient energy to change the rotational, vibrational or electronic valence configurations of molecules and atoms.