(Gullible Newton, or how light is decomposed by a prism)
There are no people more gullible, less observant and with a worse memory than the (great) physicists smile. When Galileo began to experimentally study the laws of mechanics, on the basis of his experiments, he had to turn many of the views of the great ancient Greeks upside down. But don't think that this is no longer possible in our days. The greats made mistakes and continue to make mistakes. And the newly-minted Galilees stumble upon mistakes exactly where they are least expected.
Few overlooked facts
Young Newton once allegedly observed the decomposition of the sun's rays with a prism. In doing so, he used the rays falling through the gap in the roof. Since then, everyone has been assuring that decomposition can be obtained only with the help of a narrow beam of light. Any physics professor will confirm this to you. Millions of people, including professors, have observed the decomposition of light at their leisure using an ordinary fish tank, where no width limitation of the beam of light is provided, but, nevertheless, an excellent "rainbow" appears. Of course, no one notices that this is contrary to the textbooks.
Newton, as you know, was a supporter of the corpuscular theory of light (a corpuscle is, in Russian, a particle). There were some flaws in his theory, and someone Huygens (Christian, 1629-1695) bypassed him at the turn, attributing wave properties to light.
According to both Newton and Huygens, the light should have decomposed precisely inside the prism, which means that on a sunny day in shallow sea water, with light waves of water, one should observe at the bottom, if not rainbow, then at least colored stripes. Light concentration stripes are indeed observed, but white, not colored.
When they demonstrate the decomposition of light by a prism, all demonstrators know that a rainbow strip can be obtained only at a certain distance from the prism, near it, a strip of light in the middle is white, only its edges are colored. This contradicts theory, but no one notices this contradiction.
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The rays do not give a shadow ?
In the early 90s, the future author of the monograph "The Solution to the Eternal Mysteries of Nature" (Johann Kern. The Solution to the Eternal Mysteries of Nature, St. Petersburg, Polytechnic University Publishing House, 2010, [email protected]) happened to see a rainbow strip (rainbow) from an aquarium. For some unknown reason, he wanted to determine the width of the inflowing strip of light, forming a rainbow strip behind the aquarium. He armed himself with a ruler and set to work briskly. Very quickly, he noticed that the ruler "somehow" affected the rainbow. But he could not determine the position of the edge of the ruler corresponding to one or the other border of the strip of light that forms a rainbow. He was somewhat puzzled by this, but after a while he decided to find the boundaries of the rainbow strip coming out of the aquarium. Again bad luck. He again saw that the ruler "somehow" affects the rainbow, but define none,no other border of the emerging strip could. Subconsciously, he perfectly understood that this "should not be", but it "was." A ruler applied to the surface of the aquarium did not give shade in the area of the rainbow strip.
Following in the footsteps or following the example of Galileo
His stubbornness drove him to the construction of a special triangular "aquarium" or a triangular water prism, and he began to make one discovery after another. First, he made sure that the width of the beam really did not need to be limited, and got an excellent rainbow from the rays falling on the entire wall of his water prism. Then he began to experience precisely the narrow rays of sunlight and found that there was no decomposition of light inside the water prism. As a screen, on which the rays fell, he used a narrow plastic plate of white color, which could be moved within the entire volume of the water prism. The light inside the prism was only white. This already indicated that the theories of Newton and Huygens were wrong. But he was afraid to say that even to himself. Perhaps, he convinced himself, the whole point is that all this only seems to him,and that the colored stripes cannot be seen from the outside, since the light from them, coming out of the water, somehow collects again and becomes white? But he pasted white strips of paper on the walls of his aquarium at the point where the rays fell, alternately from the inside and outside, and made sure that they remained white.
It was curious. But the most important thing, where he started, why he could not find the border of neither the inflowing strip of light, nor the border of the outgoing rainbow, he could not understand. It took at least 10 years, during which he repeatedly saw a rainbow created by an ordinary rectangular aquarium. He had long forgotten about his optical experiments with a triangular aquarium, which was gathering dust in the closet for a long time, and then one wall cracked and was thrown out. But no, no, on a sunny day, he brought a ruler or pencil closer to the wall of the aquarium, and every time he was convinced that they "do not give a shadow", but "should". The solution (explanation of the reason) did not come.
Now he is only surprised at this. He knew perfectly well that light inside a prism does not decompose. And he knew that the light, passing through the prism, turns out to be decomposed into the colors of the rainbow. What was the conclusion from this? The only one: the light decomposes at the exit from the prism. But he did not draw this conclusion. I didn’t even when, looking towards the sun into the rainbow from the aquarium, I saw green, red, blue needles splashing from one point. Of course, he, a mere mortal, is forgivable. The great Galileo, who knew his first law better than anyone else, and believed that the Earth moves around the Sun, also did not know about the presence of (universal) gravitation. But one follows from the other - without any intermediate conclusions. It was only necessary to think about the fact that the Earth, for some reason, moves in a circle around the Sun. On the basis of his First Law, it followed from this that a certain force should act on the Earth from the direction of the Sun. This law was to be discovered by him, Galileo. But he didn't know about it.
New knowledge and new riddle
When Johan Kern was finishing preparations for the publication of his Russian version of the book "The Solution to the Eternal Mysteries of Nature", he suddenly dawned. Yes, he himself does not know what prompted him to decide. It only remains to say that it came by itself. The conclusion that could and should have been drawn more than ten years ago suddenly appeared for no reason, by itself. He suddenly realized that the light decomposes exactly when it leaves the prism, and it decomposes at each point of the exit surface. Diverging colored rays are generated at each point on the exit surface. And that is why they do not give a shadow from an object applied to the output surface of the rays. And therefore they do not give a shadow from an object applied to the entrance surface of the sun's rays.
This can be clearly explained as follows. For 300 years, the path of rays in a prism has been represented, as in the following figure:
Here w stands for white, r for red, and v for violet rays (for simplicity, the intermediate colors of the rainbow spectrum are not shown).
If the path of the rays really were as shown in the figure, then with the help of plate 1, moved along the plane of the prism, it would be possible to overlap a part of the rainbow spectrum and observe only a part of its colors. However, everyone can check that this does not work. When moving plate 1, the color of the rainbow can only be made more faded (or completely extinguished), but it is impossible to achieve that some of the colors in the spectrum disappear.
Based on this simple experiment, we can conclude that the path of the rays is actually like this:
White rays w remain white inside the prism, but red, orange, yellow, green, blue, blue and violet rays emerge from each point on the opposite plane of the prism, and each of them at its own angle (only red r and violet v rays, rays with the smallest and largest deflection angles). As a result, with the help of plate 1, you can make the colors of the rainbow more faded, you can extinguish the entire rainbow, but you cannot extinguish any of the colors of the rainbow separately. And it is impossible to get a shadow from the edge of the movable plate 1. And all this is only due to the fact that all the colors of the rainbow are born at every point of the outer "exit" plane.
If in air the speeds of rays of different colors were different, then such a course of rays could be explained. But we know that the speed of all rays of light in the air is the same. Therefore, such a path of rays contradicts all existing theories of light. Light is neither a wave nor corpuscles (particles). Absolutely regardless of the fact that there is a lot of evidence that light has wave properties, the conclusion made above that light is neither a wave nor corpuscles can still be changed.
In mathematics, singulars are often mentioned, i.e. special or peculiar points. The entire output surface of the prism is a collection of similar singular points. Something happens in them that leads to the decomposition of light into color components. This process is a new mystery, "presented" to us in exchange for the found more accurate knowledge of how the decomposition of light with the help of a prism occurs, for the knowledge of how an object blocking the rays of light can not give a shadow.
This new representation of the ray path through a prism fit perfectly with the title of the book, and was clearly supposed to decorate its experimental part. Therefore, the printing of the book was suspended and the description of the above opening was included in it as an appendix.
Refinement of the path of the rays in the prism should lead to a more accurate determination of the refractive index, and thus to a more accurate calculation of optical instruments.
Johann Kern. [email protected]