Extinction of light by highly nonspherical strongly absorbing colloidal particles: spectrophotometric determination of volume distributions for carbon blacks

Despite serious nonsphericity of the particulate entities involved, observed extinction spectra for dilute carbon black sols are fitted precisely by Mie theory for ensembles of spheres which it is shown must be quite nearly volume-equivalent to the actual colloidal carbon units. Hence volume distribution statistics are obtainable for carbon blacks by inversion of spectrophotometric data on suspensions.