The Popular Science Monthly, August, 1900: Vol. 57, May, 1900 to October, 1900 — John Shaqi
The Popular Science Monthly, August, 1900: Vol. 57, May, 1900 to October, 1900Various
Science
The Popular Science Monthly, August, 1900: Vol. 57, May, 1900 to October, 1900
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
It will be well at the outset to remind the reader of the close analogy
between sound and light. A burning candle gives out spherical light
waves, just as the snapping sparks give out sound waves. The form of
the reflected light wave will be identical with that of a sound wave
reflected under similar conditions. As we can not see the light waves
themselves, we can only determine their form by calculation, and
it is interesting to see that the forms photographed are identical
in every case with the calculated ones. The object in view was to
secure acoustical illustrations of as many of the phenomena connected
with light as possible. We will begin with the very simplest case of
all: the reflection of a spherical sound wave from a flat surface,
corresponding to the reflection of light from a plane mirror. It can be
shown by geometry that the reflected wave or echo will be a portion of
a sphere, the center of which lies as far below the reflecting surface
as the point at which the sound originates is above it. In the case of
light, this point constitutes the image in the mirror. Referring to the
photograph, we see the reflected wave in three successive positions,
the interval between the sound spark and the illuminating spark having
been progressively increased. The brass balls are shown at A, and
beneath them the flat plate B, which acts as a reflector. In the first
picture the sound wave C appears as a circle of light and shade, and
has just intersected the plate. The echo appears at D. In the next
two pictures the original wave has passed out of the field, and there
remains only the echo.
It may, perhaps, be not out of place to remind the reader of the
relation between rays of light and the wave surface. What we term light
rays have no real existence, the ray being merely the path traversed by
a small portion of consecutive wave surfaces. Since the wave surface
always moves in a direction perpendicular to itself, the rays are
always normal to it. For instance, in the above case of a spherical
wave diverging from a point, the rays radiate in all directions
from the point; the same is true in the case of the echo, the rays
radiating from the image point below the reflecting surface. In all
subsequent cases the reader can, if interested in tracing the analogy
between sound and light, draw lines perpendicular to the reflected wave
surfaces representing the system of reflected waves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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