Scientific Culture, and Other Essays: Second Edition; with AdditionsCooke, Josiah P., Jr. (Josiah Parsons)
Science
Scientific Culture, and Other Essays: Second Edition; with Additions
Cooke, Josiah P., Jr. (Josiah Parsons)
Science
It will be noticed that 88 + 232 equals very nearly 319. Evidently the
effect, so far from being differential, is concurrent. Hence, the action
which causes the motion must take place between the parts of the
instrument, and can not be a direct effect of impulses imparted by
ether waves; or else we are driven to the most improbable alternative,
that lampblack and mica should have such a remarkable selective power
that the impulses imparted by the light should exert a repulsive force
at one surface and an attractive force at the other. Were there,
however, such an improbable effect, it must be independent of the
thickness of the mica vanes; while, on the other hand, if, as seemed to
us now most probable, the whole effect depended on the difference of
temperature between the lampblack and the mica, and if the light
produced an effect on the mica surface only because, the mica plate
being diathermous to a very considerable extent, the lampblack became
heated through the plate more than the plate itself, then it would
follow that, if we used a thicker mica plate, which would absorb more of
the heat, we ought to obtain a marked difference of effect. Accordingly,
we repeated the experiment with an equally sensitive radiometer, which
we made for the purpose, with comparatively thick vanes, and with this
the effect of a beam of light on the mica surface was absolutely null,
the wheel revolving in the same time, whether these faces were protected
or not.
But one thing was now wanting to make the demonstration complete. A heat
engine is reversible, and if the motion of the radiometer depended on
the circumstance that the temperature of the blackened faces of the
vanes was higher than that of the glass, then by reversing the
conditions we ought to reverse the motion. Accordingly, I carefully
heated the glass bulb over a lamp, until it was as hot as the hand would
bear, and then placed the instrument in a cold room, trusting to the
great radiating power of lampblack to maintain the temperature of the
blackened surfaces of the vanes below that of the glass. Immediately the
wheel began to turn in the opposite direction, and continued to turn
until the temperature of the glass came into equilibrium with the
surrounding objects.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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