Inventors at Work, with Chapters on DiscoveryIles, George
History
Inventors at Work, with Chapters on Discovery
Iles, George
Inventions -- History; Inventors
Professor Ernest F. Nichols of Columbia University, New York, and
Professor Gordon F. Hull of Dartmouth College, in the Journal of
Astrophysics, Chicago, June, 1903, describe their apparatus for
measuring the radiation pressure of light, a phenomenon analogous to
that studied by Professor Dvorak in the field of sound. In the same
number of that Journal they detail an experiment to show light exerting
a driving action on very tenuous particles. They burned a puff ball of
lycoperdon to charcoal spherules of about one-sixth the specific gravity
of water. These spherules, with some fine emery sand, they placed in a
glass tube shaped like an hour-glass; this tube was then exhausted of
its gases until a mere fraction remained which could not be removed.
With the sand and charcoal in its upper half the tube was held upright,
while a beam of light twenty to forty times as strong as sunshine was
thrown on the tube just below its neck. By tapping the glass a stream of
sand and charcoal descended; the sand fell through the beam without
deflection; the charcoal particles were driven away from the stream as
they fell through the light. Part of this effect was due to the slight
remnant of gas left in the tube which, warmed by the light, produced a
motion resembling that of a Crookes’ radiometer; the remainder of the
effect was caused by the drive or repulsion of the luminous beam. It is
argued that this repulsion by light is probably one of the causes why
the sun seems to drive away the tail of a comet, whose particles being
extremely minute have much surface and little bulk, so that they are
more repelled by the light of the sun than they are attracted by his
mass. To approach cometary conditions in an experiment it would be
necessary to intensify sunlight no less than 1,600-fold, because on the
surface of the earth its own gravitation is 1,600 times greater than
that which is there exerted by the sun.
A Law as a Binding Thread.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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