The daily Alaskan., 1913-12-17
MAGIC OF C0LOsS
By It We Know of What the Sun
 and Stars Are Composed.
SECRETS OF THE UNIVERSE,

lashss Are Primitive SPeetroseoPes'
 The miracle of the spectroscope Is re' peated before our eyes every day and every night without our recognizing 1t
 If people were more observant and more accustomed to think about the meaning of what they see great dis coveries would be as plentiful as dia- monds in a Kimberley pipe.
 A mrn said to me the other day, "Wbat is all this color that see when I squfnt my eyes and look at an cleo tric light?"
 l replied: Tt is the greatest rev. aIation that man has ever bad in the physical worId-it is spectrum analy- sis. Your crowded eyelashes become an astronomical lnstTument and ana Ivze the light for you into its primary coIors The multitude of narrow slits through which the light passes as you s0uint your eyes act like a difraction grating and change the direction of the various waves of light in accordance with their length.
 The red waves are long, one thir' nine-thousandth of an inch in length. and they keep on without much change of direction, but the violet waves are short. one fifty .seven-thousandth of an inch in length, and they are consid erably turned out of a straight line All the intermediate waves, from or angp, throuah yellow. green. blue and indigo. decrease in length and are more and more turned aside as they get shorter. The consequence is that you see through your nearly closed evrIashcs a band of coiors. which Is nothing but the famous spectrum of the astronomers"
 By the discovery of that spectrum and the reasoning that it led to we have found out what the sun and the stars are nude of. Every known eie meut of matter. when it is made to shine. gives out wave lengths peculiar to itself SpecuoSCOpic instruments more perfect than the eyelashes reveal tbpsp special waves in the light of the sun and the stars and by that revela- tion enable Us to detect the incandes- cent clouds, composed of the hot va DOTS of iron. copper nickel, platinum, carbon. calcium. sodium and many other substances which glow in the atmosnhere of the heavenly bodies We find these things in stars so far nwav that their light may require 1000 years to come to us, although it flies with a speed of 1sG,3OO niles per second
 Look around you when you enter brilliantly lighted parlor with crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. The mysterious spectrum flashes at you from a hundred directions at once. The glass crystals of the chandeliers are also Sppctroscopes. and they, too, spnaratc tie various cOlOred waves. though on somewhat different prin. cipre They act not as difrraction grat- ings. but as prisms, but the effect is nearly the same. When light goes through a prism the red waves are less bent out of their course than the or argr. the orange less than the yellow, tEc yellow less than the green. the green less than the blue, the blue less than the indigo and the indigo less than the violet. The result is that what was white light. with all its waves intermingIed, when it entered the prism. comes out in beautiful sheayes of color.
 A similar effect is produced by the beveled edge of a mirror or the facets of piece of cut glass glittering on a dinner table.
 The beauty of jewels depends upon their spectroscOpic powers. Every transparent substance has its own '1n- dpx of refraction," which means its peculiar power of turning light waves aside. The diamond, as the king of gems. possesses this power in the high est degree. Calling the refractve in dex of air LOO. that of glass is from I.51 to III, according to its density. while that of the diamond is PAY.
 This. property alone furnishes means of detecting the genuiDeness of diamond. Taking advantage of its high rcfractfve power and shaping its facets accordingly. the jeweler can vastly increase the brilliancy of a dia- mond by proper cutting. He can bring about internal reflections that make the stone blaze as if its atoms were all atire
 The shimmer of colors In an opal is due to the existence of invisibly mi mute Assures. which split up the light waves and scatter their hues in deli cate, iDtermiDgled rainbows.
 Nature has been doing these things for thousands of years in plain sight before man found out that he could use the principle on which she acted to uncover the secrets of the universe. Very likely she Is giving us many oth' CT equally valuable hints which We are still too stupid to understand.-Garrett ?. Serviss in Spokane SpOkesman-Re- view.
 Untrustworthy.
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