A popular
account of this is given in the _Athenaeum_ of 20th April 1907.--ED.]
These laws are simple, but somewhat singular. The radiations emitted
by a gas cannot be compared to the notes to which a sonorous body
gives birth, nor even to the most complicated vibrations of any
elastic body. The number of vibrations of the different rays are not
the successive multiples of one and the same number, and it is not a
question of a fundamental radiation and its harmonics, while--and this
is an essential difference--the number of vibrations of the radiation
tend towards a limit when the period diminishes infinitely instead of
constantly increasing, as would be the case with the vibrations of
sound.
Thus the assimilation of the luminous to the elastic vibration is not
correct. Once again we find that the ether does not behave like matter
which obeys the ordinary laws of mechanics, and every theory must take
full account of these curious peculiarities which experiment reveals.
Another difference, likewise very important, between the luminous and
the sonorous vibrations, which also points out how little analogous
can be the constitutions of the media which transmit the vibrations,
appears in the phenomena of dispersion.
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