Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/286

264 attributes of the ray of that particular wave-length, and are not evidences of separate identities. I can no more split that ray up into five or six different rays, each having different properties, than I can split up the element iron, for instance, into other elements, one possessing the specific gravity of iron, another its magnetic properties, a third its chemical properties, a fourth its conducting power for heat, and so on. A ray of light of a definite refrangibility is one and indivisible, just as an element is, and these different properties of the ray are mere functions of that refrangibility, and inseparable from it. Therefore when I tell you that a ray in the ultra-red pushes the instrument with a force of one hundred, and a ray in the most luminous part has a dynamic value of about half that, it must be understood that the latter action is not due to heat-rays which accompany the luminous rays, but that the action is one purely due to the wave-length and the refrangibility of the ray employed. You now understand why it is that I cannot give a definite answer to the question, "Is it heat or is it light that produces these movements?" There is no physical difference between heat and light; so, to avoid confusion, I call the total bundle of rays which come from a candle or the sun, radiation.

I found, by throwing the pure rays of the spectrum one after the other upon this apparatus, that I could obtain a very definite answer to my first question, "What are the actual rays which cause this action?"

The apparatus was fitted up in a room specially devoted to it, and was protected on all sides, except where the rays of light had to pass, with cotton-wool and large bottles of water. A heliostat reflected a beam of sunlight in a constant direction, and it was received on an appropriate arrangement of slit, lenses, prisms, etc., for projecting a pure spectrum. Results were obtained in the months of July, August, and September; and they are given in the figure (Fig. 5) graphically as a curve, the maximum being in the ultra-red and the minimum in the ultra-violet. Taking the maximum at 100, the following are the mechanical values of the different colors of the spectrum:

A comparison of these figures is a sufficient proof that the mechanical action of radiation is as much a function of the luminous rays as it is of the dark heat-rays.