Page:Light waves and their uses.djvu/139

Rh sort out the colors from a source of light and bend them at different angles, forming a spectrum. Since the blue waves are shorter than the red, the blue will be bent least and the red most, the intervening colors coming in their proper order between. Again, we may also have an image formed when the direction AC is such that this difference in phase of the light from successive openings, instead of one wave, is two. The spectrum thus formed is said to be of the second order. When this difference in phase is three waves, the spectrum is said to be of the third order, etc.

Plate I, Fig. 2, represents the spectrum produced by a coarse grating. The source of light was a narrow slit illuminated by sunlight. The central image appears just as though no grating were present, and on either side are diffuse spectral images colored as on Plate I. Three such images, which are the spectra of the first, second, and third orders, may be counted on the right, and the same on the left. The grating used in producing this picture had about six hundred openings to the inch. Now, a finer grating produces a much greater separation of the colors. The large concave gratings used for the best grade of spectroscopic work produce spectra of the first order which are four feet long. Those of higher order are correspondingly longer.

The efficiency of such gratings depends on the total difference of path in wave lengths between the first wave and the last. Thus in the grating shown in Fig. 87 there will be, in the case of the first spectrum, as many waves along AC as there are openings between A and B. If we call the total number of openings in the grating n, then there will be n waves along AC. In the second spectrum, then, since each one of the intervals corresponds to two waves, the total difference in the path is twice as great, so that the number of waves in AC will be 2n. For the third spectrum the number would be 3n, and for the mth spectrum mn.