Page:Light waves and their uses.djvu/165

Rh as that of steel, the density would have to be 3,600,000,000 times as small as that of steel, that is to say, roughly speaking, about 50,000 times as small as the density of hydrogen, the lightest known gas. Evidently, then, a medium which propagates vibrations with such an enormous velocity must have an enormously high elasticity or abnormally low density. In any case, its properties would be of an entirely different order from the properties of the substances with which we are accustomed to deal, so that it belongs in a category by itself.

Another course of reasoning which leads to this same conclusion—namely, that this medium is not any ordinary form of matter, such as air or gas or steel—is the following: Sound is produced by a bell under a receiver of an air pump. When the air has the same density inside the receiver as outside, the sound reaches the ear of an observer without difficulty. But when the air is gradually pumped out of the receiver, the sound becomes fainter and fainter until it ceases entirely. If the same thing were true of light, and we exhausted a vessel in which a source of light—an incandescent lamp, for example—had been placed, then, after a certain degree of exhaustion was reached, we ought to see the light less clearly than before. We know, however, that the contrary is the case, i. e., that the light is actually brighter and clearer when the exhaustion of the receiver has been carried to the highest possible degree. The probabilities are enormously against the conclusion that light is transmitted by the very small quantity of residual gas. There are other theoretical reasons, into which we will not enter.

Whatever the process of reasoning, we are led to the same result. We know that light vibrations are transverse to the direction of propagation, while sound vibrations are in the direction of propagation. We know also that in the case of a solid body transverse vibrations can be readily