To continue our study of visible light, that is, undulations extending from red to violet in the spectrum (which I am going to show you presently), I would first point out on this chart that in the section from letter A to letter D, we have visual effect and heating effect only; but no ordinary chemical or photographic effect.
The Solar Spectrum.
Photographers can leave their usual sensitive, chemically prepared plates exposed to yellow light and red light without experiencing any sensible effect; but when you get toward the blue end of the spectrum, the photographic effect begins to tell, more and more as you get toward the violet end. When you get beyond the violet, there is the invisible light known chiefly by its chemical action. From yellow to violet we have visual effect, heating effect, and chemical effect, all three; above the violet, only chemical and heating effect, and so little of the heating effect that it is scarcely perceptible.
The prismatic spectrum is Newton's discovery of the composition of white light. White light consists of every variety of color from red to violet. Here, now, we have Newton's prismatic spectrum produced by a prism. I will illustrate a little in regard to the nature of color by putting something before the light which is like colored glass; it is colored gelatin. I will put in a plate of red gelatin which is carefully prepared of chemical materials, and see what that will do. Of all the light passing to it from violet to red, it only lets through the red and orange, giving a mixed reddish color.
Here is another plate of green gelatin. The green absorbs all the red, giving only green. Here is another plate absorbing something from each portion of the spectrum, taking away a great deal of the violet and giving a yellow or orange appearance to the light. Here is another absorbing out the green, leaving red, orange, and a very little faint green, and absorbing out all the violet.
When the spectrum is very carefully produced, far more perfectly than Newton knew how to show it, we have a homogeneous spectrum. It must be noticed that Newton did not understand what we call a homogeneous spectrum; he did not produce it, and does not point out in his writings the conditions for producing it. With an exceedingly fine line of light we can bring it out as in sunlight, like this upper picture, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet according to Newton's nomenclature. Newton never used a narrow beam of light, and so could not have had a homogeneous spectrum.
This is a diagram painted on glass and showing the colors as we know them. It would take two or three hours if I were to explain the subject of spectrum analysis to-night. We must tear ourselves away from it. I will just read out to you the wave lengths corresponding to the different positions in the sun's spectrum of certain dark lines commonly called "Fraunhofer's lines." I will take as a unit the one-hundred-thousandth of a centimeter. A centimeter is 0.4 of an inch; it is a rather small half an inch. I take the thousandth of a centimeter and the hundred of that as a unit. At the red end of the spectrum the light in the neighborhood of that black line A has for its wave length 7.6; B has 6.87; D has 5.89; the "frequency" for A is 3.9 times 100 million million; the frequency of D light is 5.1 times 100 million million per second.
Now, what force is concerned in those vibrations as compared with sound at the rate of 400 vibrations per second? Suppose for a moment the same matter was to move to and fro through the same range but 400 million million times per second. The force required is as the square of the number expressing the frequency. Double frequency would require quadruple force for the vibration of the same body. Suppose I vibrate my hand again, as I did before. If I move it once per second, a moderate force is required; for it to vibrate ten times per second, 100 times as much force is required; for 400 vibrations per second, 160,000 times as much force.
If I move my hand once per second through a space of a quarter of an inch; a very small force is required; it would require very considerable force to move it ten times a second, even through so small a range; but think of the force required to move a tuning fork 400 times a second; compare that with the force required for a motion of 400 million million times a second. If the mass moved is the same, and the range of motion is the same, then the force would be one million million million million times as great as the force required to move the prongs of the tuning fork. It is as easy to understand that number as any number like 2, 3, or 4.