Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/282

260 what I think is a masterpiece of glass-working—the pump which enables me so readily to produce a vacuum unattainable by ordinary means.

The pump here at work is a modification of the Sprengel pump, but it contains two or three valuable improvements. I cannot attempt to describe the whole of the arrangements, but I will rapidly run over them as illuminated by the electric light. It has a triple-fall tube in which the mercury is carried down, thus exhausting with threefold rapidity; it has Dr. McLeod's beautiful arrangement for measuring the residual gas; it has gauges in all directions, and a small radiometer attached to it to tell the amount of exhaustion that I get in any experiments; it has a contrivance for admitting oil of vitriol into the tubes without interfering with the progress of the exhaustion, and it is provided with a whole series of most ingenious vacuum-taps devised by Mr. Gimingham. The exhaustion produced in this pump is such that a current of electricity from an induction-coil will not pass across the vacuum. This pump is now exhausting a torsion-balance, which will be described presently. Another pump, of a similar kind but less complicated, is exhausting an apparatus which has enabled me to pass from the mere exhibition of the phenomena to the obtaining of quantitative measurements.

A certain amount of force is exerted when a ray of light or heat falls on the suspended pith, and I wished to ascertain—

1. What were the actual rays—invisible heat, luminous, or ultraviolet—which caused this action?

2. What influence had the color of the surface on the action?

3. Was the amount of action in direct proportion to the amount of radiation?

4. What was the amount of force exerted by radiation?

I required an apparatus which would be easily moved by the impact of light on it, but which would readily return to zero, so that measurements might be obtained of the force exerted when different amounts of light acted on it. At first I made an apparatus on the principle of Zöllner's horizontal pendulum. For a reason that will be explained presently, I am unable to show you the apparatus at work, but the principle of it is shown in the diagram (Fig. 3). The pendulum represented by this horizontal line has a weight at the end. It is supported on two fibres of glass, one stretched upward and the other stretched downward, both firmly fastened at the ends, and also attached to the horizontal rod (as shown in the figure) at points near together, but not quite opposite to one another.

It is evident that if there is a certain amount of pull upon each of these fibres, and that the pull can be so adjusted as to counteract the weight at the end and keep it horizontal, the nearer the beam approaches the horizontal line the slower its rate of oscillation. If I relax the tension, by throwing the horizontal beam downward, I get a