Measuring Light
. A. Brightness Scientists use the units candela and lumen to measure the brightness of light as perceived by humans. These units account for the different response of the eye to light of different colors. The lumen measures the total amount of energy in the light radiated in all directions, and the candela measures the amount radiated in a particular direction. The candela was originally called the candle, and it was defined in terms of the light produced by a standard candle. It is now defined as the energy flow in a given direction of a yellow-green light with a frequency of 540 x 1012 Hz and a radiant intensity, or energy output, of 1/683 watt into the opening of a cone of one steradian. The steradian is a measure of angle in three dimensions. The lumen can be defined in terms of a source that radiates one candela uniformly in all directions. If a sphere with a radius of one foot were centered on the light source, then one square foot of the inside surface of the sphere would be il