Enough about absorption spectra for now, because if you want to go back to these so-called basics, then that's what we'll do.
1. Shorter wavelength = higher energy = greater energy transfer.
If you were to go back to your examples of gamma rays -- they are penetrating, however, when they do interact with an atom, the results can be described as catastrophic.
Regardless of the absorption spectrum theory, a photon with a shorter wavelength will impart more energy to an object than a photon with a longer wavelength.
Sure,
if a photon with higher energy/shorter wavelength is absorbed it will transfer more energy than one with a longer wavelength. However, that works under the assumption that both wavelengths are being absorbed equally. That, however, is not true. That's why this statement (emphasis mine):
"
Shorter wavelengths are more readily absorbed by substances than longer wavelengths. If it were a perfect blackbody, it wouldn't make a difference, but as most objects aren't, the wavelength does play a role in energy transfer insofar as it is the reason why blue and violet lasers are, to use forum terminology, such good burners."
is incorrect.
Oh, wait, I forgot that we were talking about visible wavelengths, even though we'd established that, oh, how many posts ago?
Who cares if they're visible wavelengths? Visible wavelengths are simply a small range of wavelengths
your eyes happen to be able to see because the sun produces them. They're
nothing special in the greater context, and spectroscopy often extends this range further into the UV and IR ranges that the human eye cannot see. Even so, despite only occupying about 400nm of bandwidth, materials
still have all kinds of absorption spectra even across that narrow band that buck the idea that shorter wavelengths--in the visible spectrum--are more readily absorbed than longer ones. Pigments are a good example of this.
it's by nature that just about all materials (and not just paper and plastic, which people like burning, we're talking materials including supposedly optically 'flat' reflectors and metals) that all exhibit a trend towards greater absorption at higher frequencies.
False. Look at various pigments and their absorption spectra. Look at laser goggles that absorb colors from one region of the spectrum and not the other. Are these "all" trending towards greater absorption at higher frequencies? The very fact that
we observe colors at all implies that substances have different absorption spectra. Otherwise everything would be look more reddish because that is the wavelength being reflected. It's not a trend, and you shouldn't rely on it as a trend.
If you were to play your argument then it's a rule because there is such a trend, and also because very few exceptions to this trend exist.
Just because
some things you test
correlate with your assertion doesn't imply causation or a rule. A blanket statement like "shorter wavelengths are absorbed more than longer wavelengths" is
not a rule because many exceptions exist.
A more complete model is required, and that model is the absorption spectrum.
I never 'asserted' (I don't even know where you got that crazy notion from) that it was a hard-and-fast rule. I've always maintained that it was a mere trend, that, for our intents and purposes, could be held loosely as a 'rule'.
You made the statement of fact, therefore you
asserted that fact. Go read above. Yes, it reads like a hard-and-fast rule. Nor have you limited your "trend" to specific materials where your "trend" may exist.
Even above you've made assertions about "all" materials.
Heck, in my original statement I even implied that the more-favourable burning properties of higher-frequency beams was due to a material's absorption spectra (see under: if everything was a blackbody, it'd be fine, but everything is not).
No, you
stated that, and I quote again:
"Shorter wavelengths are more readily absorbed by substances than longer wavelengths. If it were a perfect blackbody, it wouldn't make a difference, but as most objects aren't, the wavelength does play a role in energy transfer insofar as it is the reason why blue and violet lasers are, to use forum terminology, such good burners. "
And continue to make such assertions in your subsequent replies.
Bottom line: the greater energy possessed by a photon alone does not account for 'burning' power but neither does the absorption spectra. It's a combination of the two.
So then say
that--not false statements involving rules that are not rules.
