Scientific American Supplement, No. 467, December 13, 1884Various
Science
Scientific American Supplement, No. 467, December 13, 1884
Various
Science -- Periodicals
If I put salt on the flame of a spirit lamp, what do I see through this
grating? I see merely a sharply defined yellow light, constituting
the spectrum of vaporized sodium, while from the candle flame I see
an exquisitely colored spectrum, far more beautiful than I showed you
on the screen. I see, in fact, a series of spectrums on the two sides
with the blue toward the candle flame and the red further out. I cannot
get one definite thing to measure from in the spectrum from the candle
flame as I can with the flame of a spirit lamp with the salt thrown on
it, which gives, as I have said, a simple yellow light. The highest
blue light I see in the candle flame is now exactly on the line. Now
measure to my eye; it is forty-four feet four inches, or 532 inches.
The length of this wave then is the 532d part of the four-hundredth
of a centimeter, which would be the 21,280th of a centimeter, say the
21,000th of a centimeter. Then measure for the red, and you would find
something like the 11,000th for the lowest of the red light.
Lastly, how do we know the frequency of vibration?
Why, by the velocity of light. How do we know that? We know it in a
number of different ways, which I cannot explain now because time
forbids. Take the velocity of light. It is 187,000 British statute
miles per second. But it is much better to take a kilometer for
the unit. That is about six-tenths of a mile. The velocity is very
accurately 300,000 kilometers per second; that is, 30,000,000,000
centimeters per second. Take the wave length as the 17,000th of a
centimeter, and you find the frequency of the sodium light to be 510
million million per second. There, then, you find a calculation of
the frequency from a simple observation which you can all make for
yourselves.
[Illustration: Vibrating Spherule Imbedded in an Elastic Solid.]
Lastly, I must tell you about the color of the blue sky which was
illustrated by the spherule embedded in an elastic solid. I want to
explain to you in two minutes the mode of vibrations. Take the simplest
plane-polarized light. Here is a spherule which is producing it in
an elastic solid. Imagine the solid to extend miles horizontally and
miles down, and imagine this spherule to vibrate up and down. It is
quite clear that it will make transverse vibrations similarly in all
horizontal directions. The plane of polarization is defined as a plane
perpendicular to the line of vibration. Thus, light produced by a
molecule vibrating up and down, as this red globe in the jelly before
you, is polarized in a horizontal plane because the vibrations are
vertical.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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