A History of Science, vol 2 by Henry Smith Williams (most recommended books .txt) 📕

In 1663 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London, and in 1669 he gave to that body a concise statement of the laws governing the collision of elastic bodies. Although the same views had been given by Wallis and Wren a few weeks earlier, there is no doubt that Huygens’s views were reached independently; and it is probable that he had arrived at his conclusions several years before. In the Philosophical Transactions for 1669 it is recorded that the society, being interested in the laws of the principles of motion, a request was made that M. Huygens, Dr. Wallis, and Sir Christopher Wren submit their views on the subject. Wallis submitted his paper first, November 15, 1668. A month later, December 17th, Wren imparted to the society his laws as to the nature of the collision of bodies.

And a few days later, January 5, 1669, Huygens sent in his “Rules Concerning the Motion of Bodies after Mutual Impulse.” Although Huygens’s report was received last, he was anticipated by such a brief space of time, and his views are so clearly stated—on the whole rather more so than those of the other two—that we give them in part here:

“1. If a hard body should strike against a body equally hard at rest, after contact the former will rest and the latter acquire a velocity equal to that of the moving body.

“2. But if that other equal body be likewise in motion, and moving in the same direction, after contact they will move with reciprocal velocities.

“3. A body, however great, is moved by a body however small impelled with any velocity whatsoever.

“5. The quantity of motion of two bodies may be either increased or diminished by their shock; but the same quantity towards the same part remains, after subtracting the quantity of the contrary motion.

“6. The sum of the products arising from multiplying the mass of any hard body into the squares of its velocity is the same both before and after the stroke.

“7. A hard body at rest will receive a greater quantity of motion from another hard body, either greater or less than itself, by the interposition of any third body of a mean quantity, than if it was immediately struck by the body itself; and if the interposing body be a mean proportional between the other two, its action upon the quiescent body will be the greatest of all.”[10]

This was only one of several interesting and important communications sent to the Royal Society during his lifetime. One of these was a report on what he calls “Pneumatical Experiments.”

“Upon including in a vacuum an insect resembling a beetle, but somewhat larger,” he says, “when it seemed to be dead, the air was readmitted, and soon after it revived; putting it again in the vacuum, and leaving it for an hour, after which the air was readmitted, it was observed that the insect required a longer time to recover; including it the third time for two days, after which the air was admitted, it was ten hours before it began to stir; but, putting it in a fourth time, for eight days, it never afterwards recovered…. Several birds, rats, mice, rabbits, and cats were killed in a vacuum, but if the air was admitted before the engine was quite exhausted some of them would recover; yet none revived that had been in a perfect vacuum…. Upon putting the weight of eighteen grains of powder with a gauge into a receiver that held several pounds of water, and firing the powder, it raised the mercury an inch and a half; from which it appears that there is one-fifth of air in gunpowder, upon the supposition that air is about one thousand times lighter than water; for in this experiment the mercury rose to the eighteenth part of the height at which the air commonly sustains it, and consequently the weight of eighteen grains of powder yielded air enough to fill the eighteenth part of a receiver that contained seven pounds of water; now this eighteenth part contains forty-nine drachms of water; wherefore the air, that takes up an equal space, being a thousand times lighter, weighs one-thousandth part of forty-nine drachms, which is more than three grains and a half; it follows, therefore, that the weight of eighteen grains of powder contains more than three and a half of air, which is about one-fifth of eighteen grains….”

From 1665 to 1681, accepting the tempting offer made him through Colbert, by Louis XIV., Huygens pursued his studies at the Bibliotheque du Roi as a resident of France. Here he published his Horologium Oscillatorium, dedicated to the king, containing, among other things, his solution of the problem of the “centre of oscillation.” This in itself was an important step in the history of mechanics. Assuming as true that the centre of gravity of any number of interdependent bodies cannot rise higher than the point from which it falls, he reached correct conclusions as to the general principle of the conservation of vis viva, although he did not actually prove his conclusions. This was the first attempt to deal with the dynamics of a system. In this work, also, was the true determination of the relation between the length of a pendulum and the time of its oscillation.

In 1681 he returned to Holland, influenced, it is believed, by the attitude that was being taken in France against his religion.

Here he continued his investigations, built his immense telescopes, and, among other things, discovered “polarization,”

which is recorded in Traite de la Lumiere, published at Leyden in 1690. Five years later he died, bequeathing his manuscripts to the University of Leyden. It is interesting to note that he never accepted Newton’s theory of gravitation as a universal property of matter.

XI. NEWTON AND THE COMPOSITION OF LIGHT

Galileo, that giant in physical science of the early seventeenth century, died in 1642. On Christmas day of the same year there was born in England another intellectual giant who was destined to carry forward the work of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo to a marvellous consummation through the discovery of the great unifying law in accordance with which the planetary motions are performed. We refer, of course, to the greatest of English physical scientists, Isaac Newton, the Shakespeare of the scientific world. Born thus before the middle of the seventeenth century, Newton lived beyond the first quarter of the eighteenth (1727). For the last forty years of that period his was the dominating scientific personality of the world. With full propriety that time has been spoken of as the “Age of Newton.”

Yet the man who was to achieve such distinction gave no early premonition of future greatness. He was a sickly child from birth, and a boy of little seeming promise. He was an indifferent student, yet, on the other hand, he cared little for the common amusements of boyhood. He early exhibited, however, a taste for mechanical contrivances, and spent much time in devising windmills, water-clocks, sun-dials, and kites. While other boys were interested only in having kites that would fly, Newton—at least so the stories of a later time would have us understand—cared more for the investigation of the seeming principles involved, or for testing the best methods of attaching the strings, or the best materials to be used in construction.

Meanwhile the future philosopher was acquiring a taste for reading and study, delving into old volumes whenever he found an opportunity. These habits convinced his relatives that it was useless to attempt to make a farmer of the youth, as had been their intention. He was therefore sent back to school, and in the summer of 1661 he matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge.

Even at college Newton seems to have shown no unusual mental capacity, and in 1664, when examined for a scholarship by Dr.

Barrow, that gentleman is said to have formed a poor opinion of the applicant. It is said that the knowledge of the estimate placed upon his abilities by his instructor piqued Newton, and led him to take up in earnest the mathematical studies in which he afterwards attained such distinction. The study of Euclid and Descartes’s “Geometry” roused in him a latent interest in mathematics, and from that time forward his investigations were carried on with enthusiasm. In 1667 he was elected Fellow of Trinity College, taking the degree of M.A. the following spring.

It will thus appear that Newton’s boyhood and early manhood were passed during that troublous time in British political annals which saw the overthrow of Charles I., the autocracy of Cromwell, and the eventual restoration of the Stuarts. His maturer years witnessed the overthrow of the last Stuart and the reign of the Dutchman, William of Orange. In his old age he saw the first of the Hanoverians mount the throne of England. Within a decade of his death such scientific path-finders as Cavendish, Black, and Priestley were born—men who lived on to the close of the eighteenth century. In a full sense, then, the age of Newton bridges the gap from that early time of scientific awakening under Kepler and Galileo to the time which we of the twentieth century think of as essentially modern.

THE COMPOSITION OF WHITE LIGHT

In December, 1672, Newton was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and at this meeting a paper describing his invention of the refracting telescope was read. A few days later he wrote to the secretary, making some inquiries as to the weekly meetings of the society, and intimating that he had an account of an interesting discovery that he wished to lay before the society.

When this communication was made public, it proved to be an explanation of the discovery of the composition of white light.

We have seen that the question as to the nature of color had commanded the attention of such investigators as Huygens, but that no very satisfactory solution of the question had been attained. Newton proved by demonstrative experiments that white light is composed of the blending of the rays of diverse colors, and that the color that we ascribe to any object is merely due to the fact that the object in question reflects rays of that color, absorbing the rest. That white light is really made up of many colors blended would seem incredible had not the experiments by which this composition is demonstrated become familiar to every one. The experiments were absolutely novel when Newton brought them forward, and his demonstration of the composition of light was one of the most striking expositions ever brought to the attention of the Royal Society. It is hardly necessary to add that, notwithstanding the conclusive character of Newton’s work, his explanations did not for a long time meet with general acceptance.

Newton was led to his discovery by some experiments made with an ordinary glass prism applied to a hole in the shutter of a darkened room, the refracted rays of the sunlight being received upon the opposite wall and forming there the familiar spectrum.

“It was a very pleasing diversion,” he wrote, “to view the vivid and intense colors produced thereby; and after a time, applying myself to consider them very circumspectly, I became surprised to see them in varying form, which, according to the received laws of refraction, I expected should have been circular. They were terminated at the sides with straight lines, but at the ends the decay of light was so gradual that it