I have used the Beer-Lambert law to Determine amount of microalgae population. The absorbance value is proportional with population of microalgae. The absorbance value Increased with higher population of microalgae.
How to explain this phenomenon by physics theory?
I guess it's similar to turbidity or optical density when we talk about bacteria.
Optical Density is typically measured at 650 nm where particles interfere with the transmission of light.
According to the beer-lambert law,absorbace is directly related to the epsilon (it is gain experimentaly and related to the matrix of solvent), lenght of solution the light passes through and concentration of compunds that can absorb UV light. I guess microalgae has some unsaturated chemical compunds that can absorb this light and when you increase their concentration, it has directly influence on the absorbance you observe.
Or it's just maybe because of the dispersion of light due tu cell membranes, that's why I think it's maybe related to turbidity (as with bacteria). Also check out the McFarland concept.
The change in the absorbance at given wavelength is due to the change in the concentration, this is simply beers Lambert law. In your case, you are dealing with living organisms, if these organisms are live, then the light might enhance its productivity, and hence increases its number, in other words the concentration will increase so the absorbance will increase as well.
From Physics aspect, absorbance indicates the amount of light absorbed by the medium through which it passes, therefore, the more the number (concentration) of particular item the more particles the light will come across along its path, and therefore the more it will be absorbed, hence, the more the concentration, the more the absorbance provided other components of Beer's law are unchanged.
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