Ultraviolet quickly than violet light itself. He called them "oxidizing rays" to emphasize chemical reactivity and to distinguish them from "heat rays", discovered the previous year at the other end of the visible spectrum. The simpler term "chemical rays" was adopted shortly thereafter, and it remained popular throughout the 19th century, although there were those who held that these were an entirely different sort of radiation from light (notably John William Draper, who named them "tithonic rays"). The terms chemical rays and heat rays were eventually dropped in favor of ultraviolet and infrared radiation, respectively. In 1878 the sterilizing effect of
Ultraviolet–visible spectroscopy non-bonding electrons (n-electrons) can absorb energy in the form of ultraviolet or visible light to excite these electrons to higher anti-bonding molecular orbitals. The more easily excited the electrons (i.e. lower energy gap between the HOMO and the LUMO), the longer the wavelength of light it can absorb. There are four possible types of transitions (π–π*, n–π*, σ–σ*, and n–σ*), and they can be ordered as follows: σ–σ* > n–σ* > π–π* > n–π*. UV/Vis spectroscopy is routinely used in analytical chemistry for the quantitative determination of different analytes, such as transition metal ions, highly conjugated organic compounds, and biological