text: In optics, absorbance or decadic absorbance is the common logarithm of the ratio of incident to  radiant power through a material, and spectral absorbance or spectral decadic absorbance is the common logarithm of the ratio of incident to  spectral radiant power through a material. Absorbance is dimensionless, and in particular is not a length, though it is a monotonically increasing function of path length, and approaches zero as the path length approaches zero.