Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/679

Rh the popular writers of the time than the first scientific authorities. A scientific worker, especially if he devotes himself to original work, has not time to examine for himself all questions, even those relating to his own department, but must take something on trust from others whom he regards as authorities. One might say that a knowledge of science, like a knowledge of law, consists in knowing where to look for it. But even this kind of knowledge is not always easy to obtain. It is only by experience that one can find out who are most entitled to confidence. It is difficult now to understand the hesitation that was shown in fully accepting the doctrine that heat is a mode of motion, for all the great authorities, especially in England, seem to have favored it. Not to mention Newton and Cavendish, we have Rumford making almost conclusive experiments in its support, Davy accepting it, and Young, who was hardly ever wrong, speaking of the antagonistic theory almost with contempt. On the Continent perhaps, and especially among the French school of chemists and physicists, caloric had more influential support.

As has been said, a great part, though not the whole, of Tyndall's work was devoted to the new doctrine. Much relates to other matters, such as radiant heat. Objection has been taken to this phrase, not altogether without reason; for it may be said that when heat it is not radiant, and while radiant it is not heat. The term dark radiation, or dark radiance as Newcombe calls it, is preferable, and was often used by Tyndall. If we analyze, as Newton did, the components of light, we find that only certain parts are visible. The invisible parts produce, however, as great, or greater, effects in other ways than do the visible parts. The heating effect, for example, is vastly greater in the invisible region than in the visible. One of the experiments that Tyndall devised in order to illustrate this fact I hope now to repeat. He found that it was possible by means of a solution of iodine in bisulphide of carbon to isolate the invisible rays. This solution is opaque to light; even the sun could not be seen through it; but it is very fairly transparent to the invisible ultra-red radiation. By means of a concave reflector I concentrate the rays from an arc lamp. In their path is inserted the opaque solution, but in the focus of invisible radiation the heat developed is sufficient to cause the inflammation of a piece of gun cotton.

Tyndall varied this beautiful experiment in many ways. By raising to incandescence a piece of platinum foil, he illustrated the transformatiomtransformation [sic] of invisible into visible radiation.

The most important work, however, that we owe to Tyndall in connection with heat is the investigation of the absorption by gaseous bodies of invisible radiation. Melloni had examined the behavior of solid and liquid bodies, but not of gaseous. He