The Hartford republican. (Hartford, Ky.) 18??-1926, 1905-03-03
VARIOUS COLORS.
Process of Their Production VI
yedIy Described BY Apt
Illustrations.

Editor Republican, read with
interest in your issue of last week an
article under the headline What
Makes the Sky Blue?" If you will
indulge me space shall supplement
that article with brief essay on the
constitution of light and the distribu-
ton of color.
The man of science would say that
light is the vibration of an elastic
medium, but as such a technical def
milton would convey small meaning
to those who have given the matter
little study, | shall try to illustrate
the accepted theory of light in a
homely way. Light is a wave mo-
ton impaired to the ethereal fluid
by an outside energy. That the in
ter-planetary space, outside of the
shell of atmosphere surrounding the
planets, are filled with an elastic, jel-
ly-like fluid, termed ether, is now
the agreed verdict of science. Every
one has observed that when pebble
is dropped into still water series of
small waves is impaired to the water
in all directions from the point of
the contact with the pebble as the
center. The phenomenon we know
as sound results from waves in the
air, different in no way from the
waves in water except for the dem
sity of the medium and in the length
of the waves. In fact, violent water
waves beating against rough shore
communicate their motion to the air
so perfectly that we are able to de-
termine their length and intensity
from the communicated air waves
that reach our ears. Light is as GER
tainly a wave as water is wave or
rs sound is a wave, but it requires
FAR more elastic medium. Light and
neat, so intimately, though not abso-
lutely, related, differ only in the
length of the waves that produce
them. The greatest heat waves we
receive from the sun are non-lumi-
nous.
A heated iron rod will ignite wood
far below the temperature at which
it begins to glow, even in the dark,
and the FREELY gives off light in
which no sensible degree of heat can
be discovered. Of the blistering
neat and dazzling light we have
from the sun, it can be said with GER
tainty, that we have neither direct
from the body. The heat of a trop-
ical sun must travel more than nine
" million miles through a tempera-
ture many hundred degrees below
the freezing point, and the rays of
4 MONDAY sun must traverse vast
fields of impenetrable darkness. But
the sun is an energy communicating
tremors to the ethereal ocean which
conveys them unchanged across its
cold. dark bosom till, meeting resist
ance in the atmosphere and earth,
they develop light and heat. Light
waves have been measured, by means
of delicate instruments, with great
accuracy, and it is shown that placed
end to end it requires from forty-six
to forty-eight thousand Of them to
make an inch-the number depend
ing upon the color of the light meas
ured. Such is the rapidity with
which light waves impinge upon the
optic nerve that it absorbs trillions
of them in a single second.
AS study in physics colC,r is more
fascinating to me at least, than light.
In studying the constitution of light
the student must trust much to au-
thority, but the problem of color adj
mits of ocular demonstration. No
error with reference to the problem
of color is more universal perhaps