Experiments with Light 3

Fig. 10 the sunbeam enters at A, and, striking the mirror m at a, is partly reflected to 1 on the wall, and partly enters the glass, passes through to the silvered back at B, and is totally reflected to b, where it again divides, some of it going to the wall at 2, and the rest, continuing to make the same reflections and divisions, causes spots 3, 4, 5, etc. The brightest spot is at No.2, because the silvered glass at B is the best reflector and has the most light.

Take a small piece of mirror, say an inch in surface, and putting under it three little pellets of wax, putty, or clay, set it on the wrist, with one of the pellets on the pulse. Hold the mirror steadily in the beam of light, and the tossing spot of light on the wall will indicate the frequency and prominence of each pulse-beat. If the operator becomes excited the fact will be evident to all observers.

Fig. 10.—Manifold Reflections.

Place a coin in a basin (Fig. 11), and set it so that the rim will conceal the coin from the eye. Pour in water, and the coin will appear Page 40 to rise into sight. When light passes from a medium of one density to a medium of another, its direction is changed. Thus a stick in water seems bent. Ships below the horizon are sometimes seen above, because of the different density of the layers of air.

Its increasing density bends thus light coming from the interstellar spaces, and entering our atmosphere, down more and more. The effect is greatest when the sun or star is near the horizon, none at all in the zenith. This brings the object into view before it is risen. Allowance for this displacement is made in all delicate astronomical observations.

Fig. 11

Fig. 12.—Atmospherical Refraction.

Notice on the floor the shadow of the window-frames. The glass of almost every window is so bent as to turn the sunlight aside enough to obliterate some of the shadows or increase their thickness.

DECOMPOSITION OF LIGHT

Admit the sunbeam through a slit one inch long and one-twentieth of an inch wide. Pass it through a prism. Either purchase one or make it of three plain pieces of glass one and a half inch wide by six inches long, fastened together in triangular shape—fasten the edges with hot wax and fill it with water; then on a screen or wall you will have the colors of the rainbow, not merely seven but seventy, if your eyes are sharp enough.

Take a bit of red paper that matches the red color of the spectrum. Move it along the line of colors toward the violet. In the orange it is dark, in the yellow darker, in the green and all beyond, black. That is because there are no more red rays to be reflected by it. So a green object is true to its color only in the green rays, and black elsewhere. A second prism into white light may recombine all these colors.
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