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
* is the molar absorption coefficient of that material;
* is the molar concentration of those species;
* is the path length.
Different disciplines have different conventions as to whether absorbance is decadic (10-based) or Napierian (e-based), i.e., defined with respect to the transmission via common logarithm (log) or a natural logarithm (ln). The molar absorption coefficient is usually decadic. When ambiguity exists, it is important to indicate which one applies.
When there are N absorbing species in a solution, the overall absorbance is the sum of the absorbances for each individual species i:
The composition of a mixture of N absorbing species can be found by measuring the absorbance at N wavelengths (the values of the molar absorption coefficient for each species at these wavelengths must also be known). The wavelengths chosen are usually the wavelengths of maximum absorption (absorbance maxima) for the individual species. None of the wavelengths may be an isosbestic point for a pair of species. The set of the following simultaneous equations can be solved to find the concentrations of each absorbing species:
The molar absorption coefficient (in units of cm) is directly related to the attenuation cross section via the Avogadro constant N: