Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 19.djvu/488

472. No one who has seen a spectrum of fluted bands can ever fail to distinguish it from the other types of spectra which I have described.

What, then, is the cause for the existence of these different types? The first editions of text-books in which our science was discussed stated that a solid or liquid body gave a continuous spectrum, while a gaseous body had a spectrum of lines; the spectra of bands were not mentioned. The more recent editions give a few exceptions to this rule, and the editions which have not appeared yet, will—so I hope, at least—tell you that the state of aggregation of a body does not directly affect the nature of the spectrum. The important point is not whether a body is solid, liquid, and gaseous, but how many atoms are bound together in a molecule, and how they are bound together. This is one of the teachings of modern spectroscopy. A molecule containing a few atoms only gives a spectrum of lines. Increase the number of atoms, and you will obtain a spectrum of fluted bands; increase it once more, and you will obtain a continuous spectrum. The scientific evidence for the statements I have made is unimpeachable. In the first place, I may examine spectra of bodies which I know to be compound. Special precautions often are necessary to accomplish this purpose, for too high a temperature would invariably break up the compound molecule into its more elementary constituents. For some bodies I may employ the low temperature of an ordinary Bunsen burner. With others, a weak electric spark taken from their liquid solutions will supply a sufficient quantity of luminous undecomposed matter to allow the light to be analyzed by a spectroscope of good power. The spectrum of a compound body is never a line-spectrum. It is either a spectrum of bands or a continuous spectrum. The spectra of the oxides, chlorides, bromides, or iodides of the alkaline earths, for instance, are spectra of fluted bands. All these bodies are known to contain atoms of different kinds—the metallic atoms of calcium, barium, or strontium, and the atoms of chlorine, bromine, iodine, or oxygen.

But to obtain these spectra of bands we need not necessarily have recourse to molecules containing different kinds of atoms. Elementary bodies show these spectra, and we must conclude therefore that the dissimilarity of the atoms in the molecule has nothing to do with the appearance of the fluted bands. Similarity in the spectrum must necessarily be due to a similarity in the forces which bind the atoms together, and this at once suggests that it is the compound nature of the molecule which is the true cause of the bands, but that the molecule need not be necessarily a compound of an atom with an atom of different kind, for it may be a compound of an element with itself. We have ample proof that this is the true explanation of the different types of spectra. I shall presently give you a few examples in support of the view which is now nearly unanimously adopted by spectroscopists.

I have hitherto left unmentioned one important method of investigating the periods of molecular vibrations, a method which is