Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/291

 Rh be again repeated, the differential action of the light on the black and white surfaces keeps the bar moving, and the result will be rotation.

Here is such a pith-bar, blacked on alternate sides, and suspended in an exhausted glass bulb (Fig. 7). I project its image on the screen, and the strong light which shines on it sets it rotating with considerable velocity. Now it is slackening speed, and now it has stopped altogether. The bar is supported on a fibre of silk, which has twisted round till the rotation is stopped by the accumulated torsion. I put a water-screen between the bar and the electric light to cut off some of the active rays, and the silk untwists, turning the bar in the opposite direction. I now remove the water, and the bar revolves rapidly as at first.

From suspending the pith on a silk fibre to balancing it on a point the transition is slight; the interfering action of torsion is thereby removed, and the instrument rotates continuously under the influence of radiation. Many of these little pieces of apparatus, to which I have given the name of radiometers, are on the table, revolving with more or less speed. The diagram (Fig. 8) shows their construction, which is very simple. They have formed of four arms of very fine glass, supported in the centre by a needle-point, and having at the extremities thin disks of pith lampblacked on one side, the black surfaces all facing the same way. The needle stands in a glass cup, and the arms and disks are delicately balanced so as to revolve with the slightest impetus.

Here are some rotating by the light of a candle. This one is now rather an historical instrument, being the first one in which I saw rotation. It goes very slowly in comparison with the others, but it is not bad for the first instrument of the sort that was ever made.

I will now, by means of a vertical lantern, throw on the screen the projection of one of these instruments, so as to show the movement rather better than you could see it on the table. The electric light falling vertically downward on it, and much of the power being cut off by water and alum screens, the rotation is slow. I bring a candle