1.The albedo of an object determines its visual brightness when viewed with reflected light.
2.The albedo of Mercury is much greater than the albedo of the Earth.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
Explanation
Albedo is the measure of a surface’s reflectivity, with higher albedo indicating greater reflection of sunlight, influencing Earth’s temperature and climate.
Statement 1 is correct: Albedo refers to the reflectivity of a surface, or the fraction of light that a surface reflects. A higher albedo means more reflection of light, which causes an object to appear brighter when viewed with reflected light. This is why snowy surfaces (with high albedo) appear brighter than forests or oceans (with low albedo).
Statement 2 is incorrect: Mercury actually has a much lower albedo than Earth. Mercury’s rocky and heavily cratered surface reflects only about 12 to 14% of sunlight, meaning it absorbs the vast majority of incoming sunlight and appears relatively dark. On the other hand, Earth has a higher albedo due to its cloud cover, oceans, and ice caps, which reflect a significant portion of sunlight back into space. Earth’s average albedo is around 0.30 to 0.35.
The albedo scale ranges from 0 to 1, where 0 means a surface absorbs all incoming sunlight (no reflection) and 1 means a surface reflects all incoming sunlight (no absorption). For example, snow and ice have high albedo values of around 0.8-0.9, while forests and oceans have low albedo values, around 0.1-0.2.