Fragments of Science: A Series of Detached Essays, Addresses, and Reviews. V. 1-2Tyndall, John
Science
Fragments of Science: A Series of Detached Essays, Addresses, and Reviews. V. 1-2
Tyndall, John
Chemistry; Physics; Science
Placing a concave silvered mirror behind the electric light its rays
are converged to a focus of dazzling brilliancy. Placing in the path
of the rays, between the light and the focus, a vessel of water, and
introducing at the focus a piece of ice, the ice is not melted by the
concentrated beam. Matches, at the same place, are ignited, and wood
is set on fire. The powerful heat, then, of this luminous beam is
incompetent to melt the ice. On withdrawing the cell of water, the
ice immediately liquefies, and the water trickles from it in drops.
Reintroducing the cell of water, the fusion is arrested, and the drops
cease to fall. The transparent water of the cell exerts no sensible
absorption on the luminous rays, still it withdraws something from the
beam, which, when permitted to act, is competent to melt the ice. This
something is the dark radiation of the electric light. Again, I place
a slab of pure ice in front of the electric lamp; send a luminous beam
first through our cell of water and then through the ice. By means of
a lens an image of the slab is cast upon a white screen. The beam,
sifted by the water, has little power upon the ice. But observe what
occurs when the water is removed; we have here a star and there a
star, each star resembling a flower of six petals, and growing visibly
larger before our eyes. As the leaves enlarge, their edges become
serrated, but there is no deviation from the six-rayed type. We have
here, in fact, the crystallisation of the ice reversed by the
invisible rays of the electric beam. They take the molecules down in
this wonderful way, and reveal to us the exquisite atomic structure of
the substance with which Nature every winter roofs our ponds and
lakes.
Numberless effects, apparently anomalous, might be adduced in
illustration of the action of these lightless rays. These two
powders, for example, are both white, and undistinguishable from each
other by the eye. The luminous rays of the sun are unabsorbed by
both--from such rays these powders acquire no heat; still one of them,
sugar, is heated so highly by the concentrated beam of the electric
lamp, that it first smokes and then violently inflames, while the
other substance, salt, is barely warmed at the focus. Placing two
perfectly transparent liquids in test-tubes at the focus, one of them
boils in a couple of seconds, while the other, in a similar position,
is hardly warmed. The boiling-point of the first liquid is 78°C,
which is speedily reached; that of the second liquid is only 48°C,
which is never reached at all. These anomalies are entirely due to
the unseen element which mingles with the luminous rays of the
electric beam, and indeed constitutes 90 per cent. of its calorific
power.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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