Repulsion by Sound and Light.
Water-waves as they strike a shore or the sides of a basin exert a thrust, or a repelling action, which may easily be observed. That sound-waves act in similar fashion is proved by a little sound-mill devised in 1883 by Professor V. Dvorak, of the University of Agram in Austria. It consists of four vanes, each a small card slightly curved, mounted on a spindle. In a sounding-box nearby is a tuning-fork which may be struck through its stem F. A Helmholtz resonator has its wide opening turned toward this box, its narrow opening toward the mill. A stroke on the tuning-fork emits vibrations which send tiny jets of air against the sails of the mill, which accordingly rotate at a pace proportionate to the loudness of the sound.
A beam of light deflects dust.
Professor Ernest F. Nichols of Columbia University, New York, and Professor Gordon F. Hull of Dartmouth College, in the Journal of Astrophysics, Chicago, June, 1903, describe their apparatus for measuring the radiation pressure of light, a phenomenon analogous to that studied by Professor Dvorak in the field of sound. In the same number of that Journal they detail an experiment to show light exerting a driving action on very tenuous particles. They burned a puff ball of lycoperdon to charcoal spherules of about one-sixth the specific gravity of water. These spherules, with some fine emery sand, they placed in a glass tube shaped like an hour-glass; this tube was then exhausted of its gases until a mere fraction remained which could not be removed. With the sand and charcoal in its upper half the tube was held upright, while a beam of light twenty to forty times as strong as sunshine was thrown on the tube just below its neck. By tapping the glass a stream of sand and charcoal descended; the sand fell through the beam without deflection; the charcoal particles were driven away from the stream as they fell through the light. Part of this effect was due to the slight remnant of gas left in the tube which, warmed by the light, produced a motion resembling that of a Crookes’ radiometer; the remainder of the effect was caused by the drive or repulsion of the luminous beam. It is argued that this repulsion by light is probably one of the causes why the sun seems to drive away the tail of a comet, whose particles being extremely minute have much surface and little bulk, so that they are more repelled by the light of the sun than they are attracted by his mass. To approach cometary conditions in an experiment it would be necessary to intensify sunlight no less than 1,600-fold, because on the surface of the earth its own gravitation is 1,600 times greater than that which is there exerted by the sun.