Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 66.djvu/62

58 6,000,000° to 15,000,000°; that of Kelvin 200,000,000°; that of Ekholm 5,000,000°.

Another interesting illustration of the dangers of extrapolation occurs in the history of electricity. Faraday, starting from data concerning the variation between the length of electric sparks through air with the difference of potential, made an interesting computation of the potential difference between earth and sky necessary to discharge a cloud at a height of one mile. He estimated the difference of potential to be about 1,000,000 volts. Later investigations of the sparking distance have, however, shown this function to possess a character quite different from that which might have been inferred from the earlier work, and it is likely that Faraday's value is scarcely nearer the truth than was the original estimate of the temperature of the sun, mentioned above.

Still another notable instance of the errors to which physical research is subject when the attempt is made to extend results beyond the limits established by actual observation occurs in the case of the measurements of the infra-red spectrum of the sun by Langley. His beautiful and ingenious device, the bolometer, made it possible to explore the spectrum to wave-lengths beyond those for which the law of dispersion of the rock-salt prism had at that time been experimentally determined. Within the limits of observation the dispersion showed a curve of simple form, tending apparently to become a straight line as the wave-length increased. There was nothing in the appearance of the curve to indicate that it differed in character from the numerous empirical curves of similar type employed in experimental physics, or to lead even the most experienced investigator to suspect values for the wave-length derived from an extension of the curve. The wave-lengths published by Langley were accordingly accepted as substantially correct by all other students of radiation, but subsequent measurements of the dispersion of rock salt at the hands of Rubens and his coworkers showed the existence of a second sudden and unlooked-for turn of the curve just beyond the point at which the earlier determinations ceased; and in consequence Langley's wavelengths and all work based upon them are now known to be not even approximately accurate. The history of physics is full of such examples of the dangers of extrapolation, or, to speak more broadly, of the tentative character of most of our assumptions in experimental physics.

We have then two distinct sets of physical concepts. The first of these deals with that positive portion of physics the mechanical basis of which, being established upon direct observation, is fixed and definite, and in which the relations are as absolute and certain as those of mathematics itself. Here speculation is excluded. Matter is simply one of the three factors which enters, by virtue of its mass, into our formulae for energy, momentum, etc. Force is simply a quantity of which we need to know only its magnitude, direction, point of