How did Newton came up with the idea of prism experiment ?

[Chriss]

It looks interesting ideea but how he came up with it ? What did he knew ?

Thanks !

[Strange]

I'm pretty sure people had always noticed that prisms and other things could create "rainbow" colours. He just decided to investigate it rigorously and analyse the effect. (Apart from deciding there are 7 colours for mystical reasons.)

[CasualKilla]

It is very likely he came across the phenomenon by pure chance in his many many field of interest. Newton pretty much had no life and spent all his time studying things from alchemy, prophecy and biblical studies. There is even evidence that Hook proposed the inverse square law, before witch newton assumed a constant gravitational force.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton%27s_occult_studies

 

We can't deny newton made some excellent observations and discoveries, but even a broken clock is right once a year. You will be surprised how many things he was wrong about.

[Sensei]

It looks interesting ideea but how he came up with it ? What did he knew ?

 

Simple experimentation *)

Anybody could came up with this if enough playing.

 

*) I am doing it on daily basis.

f.e. today noticed that couple (transparent) chemical compounds that I left alone couple months ago in hermetic containers turned color to cyan.. and other one has some fluffy gel (used to be transparent like water)..

I will have to repeat everything from scratch couple times, and wait another half year for results..

Good that I at least wrote what compounds were used on containers..

[swansont]

 

We can't deny newton made some excellent observations and discoveries, but even a broken clock is right once a year. You will be surprised how many things he was wrong about.

 

This can be cured, as it were. If one does science for any reasonable period of time, one will cease to be surprised by how often scientific ideas are wrong and discarded as a result. That's part of the process of doing science. BTW broken clocks are right twice a day, but more to the point, it's an insult to imply that Newton was right just by accident.

[CasualKilla]

 

This can be cured, as it were. If one does science for any reasonable period of time, one will cease to be surprised by how often scientific ideas are wrong and discarded as a result. That's part of the process of doing science. BTW broken clocks are right twice a day, but more to the point, it's an insult to imply that Newton was right just by accident.

Agreed, it is rather uplifting to think that progress is made by perseverance rather than pure genius. Was Netwon a genius, or just utterly obsessed with learning? The fact that he truly believed some ludicrous pseudoscience leads me to the former.

 

Good point about the clock

[swansont]

Agreed, it is rather uplifting to think that progress is made by perseverance rather than pure genius. Was Netwon a genius, or just utterly obsessed with learning?

 

Does it matter?

 

The fact that he truly believed some ludicrous pseudoscience leads me to the former.

 

Ludicrous when viewed with the hindsight of modern science. Which isn't a fair measure.

[Moontanman]

I think I know how the idea of a pin hole camera came about, serendipity shouldn't ever be discounted!

[StringJunky]

Agreed, it is rather uplifting to think that progress is made by perseverance rather than pure genius. Was Netwon a genius, or just utterly obsessed with learning? The fact that he truly believed some ludicrous pseudoscience leads me to the former.

Look, just get over it, he was cleverer than you.

Edited March 28, 2015 by StringJunky

[John Cuthber]

We know quite about about Newton and his prisms.

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=3ngEugMMa9YC&pg=PA157&lpg=PA157&dq=Newton+prism+bought+fair&source=bl&ots=rD3tSemMnK&sig=rPUc0SPHe2Y-0QM57a5GKfvdwKs&hl=en&sa=X&ei=iwcXVZKwMMK0aaDTgrAM&ved=0CDcQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=Newton%20prism%20bought%20fair&f=false

 

Not least, we know that he bought a second in order to do a particular experiment.

[Chriss]

When the prism was invented and with what purpose ?

[Strange]

Glass chandeliers have multiple pieces of shaped glass to scatter the light. That is the only practical application I can think of.

 

Newton may have made his own (most people did make their own lab equipment then). Or pinched one from a chandelier.

Edited March 31, 2015 by Strange

[Chriss]

Is it possible that someone else had the ideea and Newton was inspired by it ?

[Strange]

Is it possible that someone else had the ideea and Newton was inspired by it ?

 

Which idea?

And, of course it is possible. But is there any evidence?

 

Before Isaac Newton, it was believed that white light was colorless, and that the prism itself produced the color. Newton's experiments demonstrated that all the colors already existed in the light in a heterogeneous fashion, and that "corpuscles" (particles) of light were fanned out because particles with different colors traveled with different speeds through the prism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prism#Prisms_and_the_nature_of_light

[Chriss]

Which idea?

 

The idea of prism experiment.

Edited March 31, 2015 by Chriss

[Strange]

 

The idea of prism experiment.

 

Because he was investigating the properties of light. Prisms change white light to multiple colours, he wanted to investigate how this worked.

[Chriss]

I wonder who could be the one who discovered the ideea ? Can that be found out ?

[michel123456]

Kamāl al-Dīn al-Fārisī

 

From Wiki

 

Farisi is known for giving the first mathematically satisfactory explanation of the rainbow, and an explication of the nature of colours that reformed the theory of Ibn al-Haytham Alhazen.[7] Farisi also "proposed a model where the ray of light from the sun was refracted twice by a water droplet, one or more reflections occurring between the two refractions." He verified this through extensive experimentation using a transparent sphere filled with water and a camera obscura.[8]

 

His research in this regard was based on theoretical investigations in dioptrics conducted on the so-called Burning Sphere (al-Kura al-muhriqa) in the tradition of Ibn Sahl (d. ca. 1000) and Ibn al-Haytham (d. ca. 1041) after him. As he noted in his Kitab Tanqih al-Manazir (The Revision of the Optics), Farisi used a large clear vessel of glass in the shape of a sphere, which was filled with water, in order to have an experimental large-scale model of a rain drop. He then placed this model within a camera obscura that has a controlled aperture for the introduction of light. He projected light unto the sphere and ultimately deducted through several trials and detailed observations of reflections and refractions of light that the colors of the rainbow are phenomena of the decomposition of light. His research had resonances with the studies of his contemporary Theodoric of Freiberg (without any contacts between them; even though they both relied on Ibn al-Haytham's legacy), and later with the experiments of Descartes and Newton in dioptrics (for instance, Newton conducted a similar experiment at Trinity College, though using a prism rather than a sphere).[9][10][11][12]

Born 1265

Died 12 January 1318

--------------------------------

Also found this from http://wallifaction.tumblr.com/post/83007572725/invisible-light-prism-experiments-through-the

But Newton was not the first natural philosopher to explore the effects of prisms on white light, nor even the first in the seventeenth century, although the spectra he produced were much clearer than those of his predecessors, since he figured out how far away the projection of the spectrum had to be from the prism. Thomas Hobbes, Robert Hooke and René Descartes had all noted that the prism turns white light into coloured light, although they had trouble producing more colours than the red at one extreme and the blue at the other. Newton’s famous innovation, though, was not just improving the quality of the spectrum. The experiment identified by contemporaries as his experimentum crucis (“crucial experiment”) actually involved two prisms. After separating white light (from the sun) into colours, Newton then positioned a prism in front of one of the particular coloured rays generated by the first prism. He found that the second prism didn’t change the colour of the light: blue light, for instance, remained blue. Newton’s experimentum crucis had major implications for theories about the nature of light. Many earlier scholars believed that the prism actually transformed the white light into coloured light; Newton’s experiments suggested that, in fact, the white light was composed of coloured light. He gave further support to this interpretation by showing that a second prism could also reverse the process of the first: it could recombine the colours into white light

 

Edited April 5, 2015 by michel123456

[Chriss]

Thanks for the answer.

[Chriss]

I recently read new things about dispersion of light. On Wikipedia says that it was knew from the roman period https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_spectroscopyand and article The play of colours of prims http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1207/1207.3504.pdf

 

But i still wonder who discovered it ? Shouldn't be published somewhere ?

[John Cuthber]

I recently read new things about dispersion of light. On Wikipedia says that it was knew from the roman period https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_spectroscopyand and article The play of colours of prims http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1207/1207.3504.pdf

 

But i still wonder who discovered it ? Shouldn't be published somewhere ?

The first person to observe the effect would have been someone who had a piece of ice and some sunlight.

It probably happened before anyone had invented writing.

How could it be recorded somewhere?

[Strange]

The earliest written record is the Epic of Gilgamesh, which dates from about 2,000 BC (although the stories may be much older):

 

"The gods were angry at mankind so they sent a flood to destroy him. The god Ea, warned Utnapishtim and instructed him to build an enormous boat to save himself, his family, and "the seed of all living things." He does so, and the gods brought rain which caused the water to rise for many days. When the rains subsided, the boat landed on a mountain, and Utnapishtim set loose first a dove, then a swallow, and finally a raven, which found land. The god Ishtar, created the rainbow and placed it in the sky, as a reminder to the gods and a pledge to mankind that there would be no more floods"

Edited February 2, 2016 by Strange

[swansont]

Of course that doesn't actually show that these people knew that a rainbow involved refracted light. That passage does not eliminate the possibility that they thought a rainbow was a colorful object placed in the sky, and visible for no different reason than trees and mountains are visible.

[Chriss]

I think they didn't asked questions about the rainbow. And also the one who discovered dispersion with prism knew that he can recombine with another. It isn't an observation like i've read, but a discovery in my opinion. I'm curious what was the world like then, what they had.

[Chriss]

Why it took so long since discovering the dispersion of light until they discovered elements by spectral analysis ?