On the various forces of nature and their relations to each other - Michael Faraday

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the purpose of bringing your minds to see that bodies are not merely held together by this power of cohesion, but that they are held together in very curious ways. And suppose I take some things that are held together by this force, and examine them more minutely. I will first take a bit of glass, and if I give it a blow with a hammer, I shall just break it to pieces. You saw how it was in the case of the flint when I broke the piece off; a piece of a similar kind would come off, just as you would expect; and if I were to break it up still more, it would be as you have seen, simply a collection of small particles of no definite shape or form. But supposing I take some other thing, this stone for instance (fig. 15) [taking a piece of mica12], and if I hammer this stone, I may batter it a great deal before I can break it up. I may even bend it without breaking it; that is to say, I may bend it in one particular direction without breaking it much, although I feel in my hands that I am doing it some injury. But now, if I take it by the edges, I find that it breaks up into leaf after leaf in a most extraordinary manner. Why should it break up like that? Not because all stones do, or all crystals; for there is some salt (fig. 16)—you know what common salt is13: here is a piece of this salt which by natural circumstances has had its particles so brought together that they have been allowed free opportunity of combining or coalescing; and you shall see what happens if I take this piece of salt and break it. It does not break as flint did, or as the mica did, but with a clean sharp angle and exact surfaces, beautiful and glittering as diamonds [breaking it by gentle blows with a hammer]; there is a square prism which I may break up into a square cube. You see these fragments are all square—one side may be longer than the other, but they will only split up so as to form square or oblong pieces with cubical sides. Now, I go a little further, and I find another stone (fig. 17) [Iceland, or calc-spar]14, which I may break in a similar way, but not with the same result. Here is a piece which I have broken off, and you see there are plain surfaces perfectly regular with respect to each other; but it is not cubical—it is what we call a rhomboid. It still breaks in three directions most beautifully and regularly, with polished surfaces, but with sloping sides, not like the salt. Why not? It is very manifest that this is owing to the attraction of the particles, one for the other, being less in the direction in which they give way than in other directions. I have on the table before me a number of little bits of calcareous spar, and I recommend each of you to take a piece home, and then you can take a knife and try to divide it in the direction of any of the surfaces already existing. You will be able to do it at once; but if you try to cut it across the crystals, you cannot—by hammering, you may bruise and break it up—but you can only divide it into these beautiful little rhomboids.

      Fig. 15., Fig. 16. and Fig. 17.

      Now I want you to understand a little more how this is—and for this purpose I am going to use the electric light again. You see, we cannot look into the middle of a body like this piece of glass. We perceive the outside form, and the inside form, and we look through it; but we cannot well find out how these forms become so: and I want you, therefore, to take a lesson in the way in which we use a ray of light for the purpose of seeing what is in the interior of bodies. Light is a thing which is, so to say, attracted by every substance that gravitates (and we do not know anything that does not). All matter affects light more or less by what we may consider as a kind of attraction, and I have arranged (fig. 18) a very simple experiment upon the floor of the room for the purpose of illustrating this. I have put into that basin a few things which those who are in the body of the theatre will not be able to see, and I am going to make use of this power, which matter possesses, of attracting a ray of light. If Mr. Anderson pours some water, gently and steadily, into the basin, the water will attract the rays of light downwards, and the piece of silver and the sealing-wax will appear to rise up into the sight of those who were before not high enough to see over the side of the basin to its bottom. [Mr. Anderson here poured water into the basin, and upon the Lecturer asking whether any body could see the silver and sealing-wax, he was answered by a general affirmative.] Now, I suppose that everybody can see that they are not at all disturbed, whilst from the way they appear to have risen up, you would imagine the bottom of the basin and the articles in it were two inches thick, although they are only one of our small silver dishes and a piece of sealing-wax which I have put there. The light which now goes to you from that piece of silver was obstructed by the edge of the basin, when there was no water there, and you were unable to see anything of it; but when we poured in water, the rays were attracted down by it, over the edge of the basin, and you were thus enabled to see the articles at the bottom.

      Fig. 18.

      Fig. 19.

      I have shewn you this experiment first, so that you might understand how glass attracts light, and might then see how other substances, like rock-salt and calcareous spar, mica, and other stones, would affect the light; and, if Dr. Tyndall will be good enough to let us use his light again, we will first of all shew you how it may be bent by a piece of glass (fig. 19). [The electric lamp was again lit, and the beam of parallel rays of light which it emitted was bent about and decomposed by means of the prism.] Now, here you see, if I send the light through this piece of plain glass, A, it goes straight through, without being bent, unless the glass be held obliquely, and then the phenomenon becomes more complicated; but if I take this piece of glass, B [a prism], you see it will shew a very different effect. It no longer goes to that wall, but it is bent to this screen, C; and how much more beautiful it is now [throwing the prismatic spectrum on the screen]. This ray of light is bent out of its course by the attraction of the glass upon it. And you see I can turn and twist the rays to and fro, in different parts of the room, just as I please. Now it goes there, now here. [The Lecturer projected the prismatic spectrum about the theatre.] Here I have the rays once more bent on to the screen, and you see how wonderfully and beautifully that piece of glass not only bends the light by virtue of its attraction, but actually splits it up into different colours. Now, I want you to understand that this piece of glass [the prism] being perfectly uniform in its internal structure, tells us about the action of these other bodies which are not uniform—which do not merely cohere, but also have within them, in different parts, different degrees of cohesion, and thus attract and bend the light with varying powers. We will now let the light pass through one or two of these things which I just now shewed you broke so curiously; and, first of all, I will take a piece of mica. Here, you see, is our ray of light. We have first to make it what we call polarised; but about that you need not trouble yourselves—it is only to make our illustration more clear. Here, then, we have our polarised ray of light, and I can so adjust it as to make the screen upon which it is shining either light or dark, although I have nothing in the course of this ray of light but what is perfectly transparent [turning the analyser round]. I will now make it so that it is quite dark; and we will, in the first instance, put a piece of common glass into the polarised ray, so as to shew you that it does not enable the light to get through. You see the screen remains dark. The glass then, internally, has no effect upon the light. [The glass was removed, and a piece of mica introduced.] Now, there is the mica which we split up so curiously into leaf after leaf, and see how that enables the light to pass through to the screen, and how, as Dr. Tyndall turns it round in his hand, you have those different colours, pink, and purple, and green, coming and going most beautifully—not that the mica is more transparent than the glass, but because of the different manner in which its particles are arranged by the force of cohesion.

      Fig. 20.

      Now we will see how calcareous spar acts upon this light,—that stone which split up into rhombs, and of which you are each of you going to take a little piece home. [The mica was removed, and a piece of calc-spar introduced at A.] See how that turns the light round and round, and produces these rings and that black cross (fig. 20). Look at those colours—are they not most beautiful for you and for me?—for I enjoy these things as much as you do. In what a wonderful manner they open out to us the internal arrangement of the particles of this calcareous spar by the

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