Physics Entertainment
Physics Entertainment
Physics Entertainment
DESIGNED BY L. L A M M
CONTENTS
Chapter One
SPEED AND VELOCITY. COMPOSITION OF MOTIONS
BRAIN-TEASER 24
Chapter Two
GRAVITY AND WEIGHT. LEVERS. PRESSURE
CATCHING A BULLET 35
MELON AS BOMB 35
TRUTH 44
Chapter Three
ATMOSPHERIC RESISTANCE
BIG BERTHA 52
LIVE GLIDERS 54
BALLOONING SEEDS 55
THE BOOMERANG 57
Chapter Four
ROTATION. "PERPETUAL MOTION" MACHINES
WHIRLIGIG 61
INKY WHIRLWINDS 62
"THE SNAG" 67
UFIMTSEV'S ACCUMULATOR 70
Chapter Five
PROPERTIES OF LIQUIDS AND GASES
IGNORANCE OF ANCIENTS 77
UNPLEASANT PROPERTY 85
THINNEST OF ALL
HOW WE DRINK 98
A BETTER FUNNEL 98
Chapter Six
HEAT
ER? 106
Chapter Seven
LIGHT
Chapter Eight
REFLECTION AND REFRACTION
MIRAGES 154
Chapter Nine
VISION
STEREOSCOPE 170
Chapter Ten
SOUND AND HEARING
The aim of this book is not so much to give you some fresh knowl-
edge, as to help you "learn what you already know". In other words,
my idea is to brush up and liven your basic knowledge of physics, and
to teach you how to apply it in various ways. To achieve this purpose
conundrums, brain-teasers, entertaining anecdotes and stories, amusing
experiments, paradoxes and unexpected comparisons all dealing
with physics and based on our everyday world and sci-fic are afford-
ed. Believing sci-fic most appropriate in a book of this kind, I have
quoted extensively from Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, Mark Twain and
other writers, because, besides providing entertainment, the fantastic
experiments these writers describe may well serve as instructive illus-
trations at physics classes.
Since so much interest has been shown in the history of this book,
let me give you a few salient points of its "biography".
10
its fundamentals with every day. This must necessarily be taken into
consideration.
On the other hand, I have been reproached more than once for fail-
ing to deal in this book with questions such as the latest achievements
in radio engineering, nuclear fission, modern theories and the like.
This springs from a misunderstanding. This book has a definite pur-
pose; it is the task of other books to deal \\ilh the points mentioned.
Physics for Entertainment has, besides its second part, some other
associated books of mine. One, Physics at Every Step, is intended for
the unprepared layman who has still not embarked upon a systematic
study of physics. The other two are, on the contrary, for people >\ho
have gone through a secondary school course in physics. These arc
Mechanics for Entertainment and Do You Know Your Physics?, the
Jast being the sequel, as it wore, to this book.
1936 Y. P er elm an
CHAPTER ONE
Nimble compared to the snail and the tortoise, you would find your-
self greatly outraced when comparing your own motion with other
motions even not very fast ones that we see all around us. True,
you will easily outpace the current of most rivers in the plains and be
a pretty good second to a moderate wind. But you will successfully
vie with a fly, which does 5 m/sec, only if you don skis. You won't over-
13
take a hare or a hunting dog even when riding a fast horse and you can
rival the eagle only aboard a plane.
Still the machines man has invented make him second to none for
speed. Some time ago a passenger hydrofoil ship, capable of 60-70 km.
p.h., was launched in the U.S.S.R. (Fig. 1). On land you can move faster
(Fig. 3) and TU-114 jet liners, which do about 800 km. p.h. It was
not so long ago that aircraft designers sought to overcome the "sound
barrier", to attain speeds faster than that of sound, which is 330 m/sec,
14
or 1,200 km. p.b. Today this has been achieved. We have some small
but very fast supersonic jet aircraft that can do as much as 2,000
km.p.h.
There are man-made vehicles that can work up still greater speeds.
The initial launching speed of the first Soviet sputnik was about
escape
A snail
A tortoise
20 or
70
A fish
1 m/scp or
A pedestrian
1.4 or
f. r
Cavalry, pacing
1.7 or
M trotting
3.5 or
12.fi
A fly
5 or
18
A skier
5 or
18
Cavalry, galloping
A hydrofoil ship
8.5 or
16 or
30
58
A hare
18 or
65
An eagle
24 or
86
A hunting dog
25 or
90
A train
28 or
100
50 or
170
174 or
220 or
633
800
Sound in air
330 or
1,200
550 or
2.000
ity
30,000 " or
108,000 '
15
I'm not talking through my hat. We can really do that. The answer
lies in the 9-hour difference in Vladivostok and Moscow zonal times.
If our plane covers the distance between the two cities in these 9 hours,
it will land in Moscow at the very same time at which it took off from
Vladivostok. Considering that the distance is roughly 9,000 kilome-
tres, we must fly at a speed of 9,000:9 = 1,000 km. p.h., which is quite
possible today.
16
(right)
22668
17
We can't move our limbs as fast as insects. The fastest thing we can
do is to blink our eyelids. This takes place so quickly that we fail even
to notice the transient obscurement of our field of vision. Few know,
though, that this movement, "in the twinkling of an eye" which has
18
"'Have you ever seen a curtain before a window fixed in that way
before?'
"I followed his eyes, and there was the end of the curtain, frozen, as
it were, corner high, in the act of flapping briskly in the breeze.
"'And here,' he said, and opened the hand that held the glass. Natu-
rally I winced, expecting the glass to smash. But so far from smashing
it did not even seem to stir; it hung in mid-air motionless. 'Roughly
speaking,' said Gibberne, 'an object in these latitudes falls 16 feet in
a second. This glass is falling 16 feet in a second now. Only you see,
it hasn't been falling yet for the hundredth part of a second. [Note also
that in the first hundredth of the first second of its downward flight a
body, the glass in this case, covers not the hundredth part of the dis-
tance, but the 10,000th part (according to the formula S=U2 gt*). This
is only 0.5 mm and in the first thousandth of the second it would be
only 0.01 mm.l
"I looked out of the window. An immovable cyclist, head down and
with a frozen puff of dust behind his driving-wheel, scorched to over-
take a galloping char-a-banc that did not stir....
"We went out by his gate into the road, nnd there we made a minute
examination of the statuesque passing traffic. The top of the wheels
2* 19
and some of the legs of the horses of this char-a-banc, the end of the
whip lash and the lower jaw of the conductor who was just beginning
to yawn were perceptibly in motion, but all the rest of the lumbering
conveyance seemed still. And quite noiseless except for a faint rat-
tling that came from one man's throat! And as parts of this frozen
edifice there were a driver, you know, and a conductor, and eleven
people!...
"A purple-faced little gentleman was frozen in the midst of a violent
struggle to refold his newspaper against the wind; there were many evi-
dences that all these people in their sluggish way were exposed to a
considerable breeze, a breeze that had no existence so far as our sensa-
tions went....
"All that I had said, and thought, and done since the stuff had begun
to work in my veins had happened, so far as those people, so far as the
world in general went, in the twinkling of an eye...."
Would you like to know the shortest stretch of time that scientists
can measure today? Whereas at the beginning of this century it was
only the 10,000th of a second, today the physicist can measure the
100,000 millionth of a second; this is about as many times less than a
second as a second is less than 3,000 years!
20
"Sir, rest at peace in bed and remember that the earth turns. At the
49th parallel that of Paris you travel more than 25,000 km a day.
Should you want a nice view, draw your curtain aside and admire the
starry sky."
The man who sent these letters was found and tried for fraud. The
story goes that after quietly listening to the verdict and paying the
fine demanded, the culprit struck a theatrical pose and solemnly de-
clared, repeating Galileo's famous words: "It turns. 1 '
A bit of a puzzler, isn't it? After all, it's always day on one side of
the earth and night on the other. But don't dismiss my question as
senseless. Note that I'm asking you not when the earth itself moves
faster, but when we, who live on the earth, move faster in the heavens.
And that is another pair of shoes.
21
Midday
Midnighi
Any of you who are good at geometry will easily reckon that for
Leningrad, which is on the 60th parallel, this difference is only half as
much. At 12 p.m. Leningraders travel in the solar system half a
kilometre more a second than they would do at 12 a.m.
Doesn't it seem that the top of the wheel is moving faster than the
bottom? And when you look at the upper and lower spokes of the moving
wheel of a carriage, wouldn't you think the same? Indeed, the upper
spokes seem to merge into one solid body, whereas the lower spokes
can be made out quite distinctly.
22
Incredibly enough, the top of the rolling-wheel does really move faster
than the bottom. And, though seemingly unbelievable, the explanation
is a pretty simple one. Every point on the rolling wheel makes two
motions simultaneously one about the axle and the other forward
together with the axle. It's the same as with the earth itself. The two
motions add, but with different results for the top and bottom of the
wheel. At the top the wheel's motion of rotation is added to its mo-
tion of translation, since both are in the same direction. At the bot
torn rotation is made in the reverse direction and, consequently, must
be subtracted from translation. That is why the stationary observer
sees the top of the wheel moving faster than the bottom.
part
As we have seen, not all parts of a rolling cart-wheel move with the
same speed. Which part is slowest? That which touches the ground.
Strictly speaking, at the moment of contact, this part is absolutely
stationary. This refers only to a rolling wheel. For the one that spins
round a fixed axis, this is not so. In the case of a flywheel, for instance,
all its parts move with the same speed.
BRAIN-TEASER
move not forwards but backwards. The further point D the end of the
match is from the edge of the coin, the more noticeable backward
motion is (point D shifts to D').
The points on the bead of the train wheel move similarly. So when
I tell you now that there are points in a train that move not forward
but backward, this should no longer surprise you. True, this backward
motion lasts only the negligible fraction of a second. Still there is,
despite all our habitual notions, a backward motion in a moving train.
Figs. 9 and 10 provide the explanation.
They don't see the yacht moving at right angles to their own course,
because they don't realise that they are moving themselves. They think
25
Fig. 11. The yacht is cutting across the rowboat's course. Arrows a and b designate
the velocities. What will the people in the dinghy see?
Travelling together with the earth in its orbital path, we also plot
the position of the stars wrongly just as the people in the dinghy did
when asked where the yacht cast off from. We see the stars displaced
slightly forward in the direction of the earth's orbital motion. Of course,
the earth's speed is negligible compared with that of light (10,000
Fig. 12. The people in the dinghy think the yacht to be coming towards them
slantwise from point N
Did you like the yacht problem? Then answer another two questions
related to the same problem. Firstly, give the direction in which the
yachtsmen think the dinghy is moving. Secondly, say where the yachts*
men think the dinghy is heading. To answer, you must construct a par-
allelogram of velocities on the vector a (Fig. 12), whose diagonal will
indicate that from the yachtsmen's point of view the dinghy seems to
be moving slantwise, as if heading for the shore.
CHAPTER TWO
You'd think I was joking if I told you that you wouldn't be able
to get up from a chair provided you sat on it in a certain way, even
though you wouldn't be strapped down to it. Very well, let's have a go.
Sit down on a chair in the same way the boy in Fig. 13 is sitting. Sit
upright and don't shove your feet under the chair. Now try to get up
without moving your feet or bending forward. You can't, however
hard you try. You'll never stand up until you push your feet under
the chair or lean forwards.
Fig. 13. It's impossible to ieaBon is that their foundations are sunk
get up deep in the ground.
You won't fall only when the perpendicular from your centre of
gravity lies within the area bound by the outer edge of your feet (Fig. 16).
That is why it is so hard to stand on one leg and still harder to
balance on a tight-rope. Our "base" is very small and the perpendicular
from the centre of gravity may easily come to lie outside its limits.
Have you noticed the odd gait of an "old sea dog"? He spends most of
his life aboard a pitching ship
where the perpendicular from
the centre of gravity of his body
may come to fall outside his
"base" any moment. That accus-
toms him to walk on deck so
that his feet are set wide apart
and take in as large a space as
an old photograph
possible, which saves him from falling. Naturally, he'll waddle in the
same habitual fashion on hard ground as well.
29
from the centre of gravity higher than usual, because of the head-load,
The sitting boy's centre of gravity is inside the body near the spine
about 20 centimetres above the level of his nave).
Drop a perpendicular from this point. It will pass
through the chair behind the feet. You already
know that for the man to stand up it should go
through the area taken up by the feet. Conse-
quently, when we get up we must either bend
forward, to shift the centre of gravity, or shove our
feet beneath the chair to place our "base" below
Fig. 16. When one the centre of gravity. That is what we usually do
boumf^ thcTsoles'of u P~" as you, have already gathered from your own
one's feet experience.
The things you do thousands of times a day, and day after day all
your life, ought to be things you have a very good idea about, oughtn't
they? Yes, you will say. But that is far from so. Take walking and
running, for instance. Gould anything be more familiar? But I won-
der how many of you have a clear picture of what we really do when we
walk and run, or of the difference between the two. Let's see what a
physiologist has to say about walking and running. I'm sure most of
you will find his description startlmgly novel. (The passage is from
Prof. Paul Bert, Lectures on Zoology. The illustrations are my own.)
"Suppose a person is standing on one leg, the right leg, for instance.
Suppose further that he is lifting his heel, meanwhile bending forwards.
[When walking or running a person exerts on the ground, when pushing
his foot away from it, a pressure of some 20kg in addition to
his weight. Hence a person exerts a greater pressure on the ground
when he is moving than when standing. V. P.] In such a position the
30
support of both feet. Balance is thus restored; the person has taken
a step forward.
"He may remain in this rather tiring position, but should he wish
to continue forward, he will lean still further forward, shift the per-
pendicular from the centre of gravity outside the base, and again throw
his leg the right one this time forwards when about to fall. He thus
Fig. 18. A graph showing how one's feet move when walking. Line A
is the left foot and line B is the right foot. The straight sections show
when the foot is on the ground, and the curveswhen the foot is in the
air. In the time-interval a both feet are on the ground; in the time-
interval 6, foot A is in the air and foot B still on the ground; in the
timeinterval c both feet are again on the ground. The faster ono walks,
the shorter the time-intervals a and c get (compare with the "run-
ning" graph in Fig. 20).
takes another step forward. And so on ana so forth. Consequently,
walking is just a series of forward fallings, punctually forestalled
by throwing the leg left behind into a supporting position.
Fig. 19. How one runs. The series of positions in running, showing
moments when both feet are in the air
"Let's try to get to the root of the matter. Suppose the first step
has already been made. At this particular moment the right foot is
still on the ground and the left foot is already touching it. If the step
is not very short the right heel should be lifted, because it is this rising
heel that enables one to bend forward and change one's balance. It is the
heel of the left foot that touches the ground first. When next the entire
Fig. 20. A graph showing how one's feet move when running
when both feet are in the air. This is the difference between
sole stands on the ground, the right foot is lifted completely and no
longer touches the ground. Meanwhile the left leg, which is slightly
bent at the knee, is straightened by a contraction of the femoral triceps
to become for an instant vertical. This enables the half-bent right
32
Most will surely say that one must jump forward, in the direction in
which the car is going, in conformity with the law of inertia. But what
does inertia have to do with it all? Til wager that anyone you ask this
question will soon find himself in a quandary, because according to
inertia one should jump backwards, contrary to the direction of motion.
Actually inertia is of secondary importance. If we lose sight of the main
reason why one should jump forwards one that has nothing to do with
inertia we will indeed come to think that we must jump backwards
and not forwards.
Suppose you have to jump off a moving car. What happens? When
you jump, your body has, at the moment you let go, the same velocity
as the car itself by inertia and tends to move forwards. By jumping
forwards, far from diminishing this velocity, we, on the contrary, in-
crease it. Then shouldn't we jump backwards since in that case the
velocity thus imparted would be subtracted from the velocity our body
32668 33
possesses by inertia, and hence, on touching the ground, our body would
have less of a toppling impetus?
But, when one jumps from a moving carriage, one always jumps
forwards in the direction of its movement. That is indeed the best way,
a time-honoured one, and I strongly warn you against trying to test
the awkwardness of jumping backwards.
The following curious incident was reported during the First World
War. One French pilot, while flying at an altitude of two kilometres,
saw what he took to be a fly near his face. Trapping it with his hands,
he was flabbergasted to find that he had caught a German bullet! How
like the tall stories told by Baron Munchausen of legendary fame,
who claimed he had caught cannon balls with bare hands! But there
is nothing incredible in the bullet-catching story.
A bullet does not fly everlastingly with its initial velocity of 800-
900 m/scc. Air resistance causes it to slow down gradually to a mere
40 m/scc towards the end of its journey. Since aircraft fly with a sim-
ilar speed, we can easily have a situation when bullet ami plane will
be flying with the same speed, in which case the bullet, in its relation
to the piano and its pilot, will be stationary or barely moving. The
pilot can easily catch it with his hand, especially if gloved, because a
bullet heats up considerably while whizzing through the air.
MELON AS BOMB
bullets will strike the aircraft with the same impact as if fired from a
machine gun. Since the relative velocities in both cases are the same
the plane and bullet meet with a speed of about 800 m/sec the de-
struction done when they collide is the same as well . On the contrary,
bullets fired from behind at a plane moving with the same speed are
harmless, as we have already seen.
36
Fig. 22 shows one such device. The right wrist is strapped to the small-
er board a which slides up and down in the slots in board ft, which,
in turn, slides to and fro along the grooves of the writing board placed
on the train compartment table. This arrangement provides plenty of
"elbow-room" for writing and at the same time causes each jolt to
act simultaneously on both paper and pen, or rather the hand holding
the pen. This makes the process as simple as writing on an ordinary
table at home. The only unpleasant thing about it is that since the
jolts again do not act simultaneously on both wrist and head, you get
a jerky picture of what you're writing.
37
You will get your correct weight only if you stand on the scales without
moving. As soon as you bend down, the scales show less. Why? When
you bend, the muscles that do this also pull up the lower half of your
body and thus diminish the pressure it exerts on the scales. On the
contrary, when you straight en up, your muscles push the upper and
lower halves of the body away from each other; in this case the scales
will register a greater weight since the lower half of your body ex-
erts a greater pressure on the scales.
38
You might conclude that the deeper down in the earth \ve were to put
our one-kilogramme weight, the greater the force of attraction would
grow and the more it should weigh. However, you would bo mistaken.
The weight of a body does not increase; on the contrary, it diminishes.
Downward
attraction
This is because now the earth's attracting forces no longer act just on
one side of the body but all around it. Fig. 23 shows you the weight in
a well; it is pulled down by the fore es below it and simultaneously up
by the forces above it. It is really only the pull of that spherical part
of the earth, the radius of which is equal to the distance from the centre
of the earth to the body, that is of importance. Consequently, the deeper
down we go, the less a body should weigh. At the centre of the earth
it should weigh nothing, as here it is attracted by equal forces on all
sides.
39
To sum up: a body weighs most at the earth's surface; its weight
diminishes whether it is lifted up from the earth's surface or interred
(this would stand, naturally, only if the earth were homogeneous in
density throughout). Actually, the closer to its centre, the greater the
earth's density; at first the force of gravity grows to some distance
down; only then does it start to diminish.
Have you noticed that odd sensation you experience when you start
to go down in a lift? You feel abnormally light; if you were falling into
a bottomless abyss you would feel the same. This sensation is caused
by weightlessness. At the very first moment when the lift-cabin floor
has already started to go down but you yourself have still not acquired
its velocity, your body exerts scarcely any pressure at all on the floor,
and, consequently, weighs very little. An instant later this queer
sensation is gone. Now your body seeks to fall faster than the smoothly
running lift; it exerts a pressure on the cabin floor, reacquiring its
full weight.
Tie a weight to the hook of a spring balance and observe the pointer as
you quickly lower the balance together with the weight. For conveni-
ence's sake insert a small piece of cork in the slot and observe how it
moves. The pointer will fail to register the full weight; it will be much
less! If the balance were falling freely and you would be able to watch
its pointer meanwhile, you would see it register a zero weight.
The heaviest object will lose all its weight when falling. The reason
is simple. ''Weight" is the force with which a body pulls at something
holding it up or presses down on something supporting it. A jailing
body cannot pull the balance spring as it is falling together with it.
A falling body does not pull at anything or press down on anything.
Hence, to ask how much something weighs when falling is the same as
to ask how much it weighs when it does not weigh.
Galileo, the father of mechanics, wrote way back in the 17th century in
his Mathematical Proofs Concerning Two Fields of a New Science:
"We feel a load on our back when we try to prevent it from dropping.
But if we were to drop as fast as the load does, how could it press upon
40
and burden us? This would be the same as to try to transfix with a
spear [without letting go of it Y. P.] somebody running ahead of us
as fast as we are running ourselves."
other tied by a piece of thread to the hook of the scale arm (Fig. 24). Add
weights to the other pan to balance the nutcracker. Apply a lighted
match to the thread. The thread will burn through and the suspended
nutcracker arm will fall onto the pan. Will tho pan holding the nutcrack-
er dip? Will it rise? Or will it remain in equilibrium? Since you know
by now that a falling body weighs nothing, you should be able to give
the correct answer. The pan will rise for a moment. Indeed, though
joined to the lower arm the nutcracker's upper arm nevertheless exerts
less of a pressure on the pan when falling than when stationary. For
a moment the nutcracker's weight diminishes, and thus the pan hold-
ing it rises.
The years between 1865 and 1870 saw the publication in France of
Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon, in which he set forth a fan-
tastic scheme to shoot at the Moon an enormous projectile with people
inside. His description seemed so credible that most of you who have
41
read this book have probably hazarded whether this really could
be.done. Well, let's discuss it. (Today, after Sputnik and Lunik, we know
that it is rockets, not cannon projectiles, that will be used for space
travel. However, since a rocket flies after its last engine burns out, in
accord with the same laws of ballistics, don't think Perelman is be-
fi hind the times.)
All that remains is to reckon the distance AB (Fig. 25), or, in other
words, the distance the shell travels horizontally in the space of a
second, which will tell us the speed we need. In the triangle AOB, the
side OA is the earth's radius (roughly 6,370,000 m); OC=OA and
fiC=5m; h nee OB is 6,370,005 m. Applying Pythagoras's theorem we get:
a (6,370,000) 2 .
whenvelociiy is
present some quite specific difficulties. Let me refer you, for greater
detail, to Book Two of Physics for Entertainment and also to Inter-
planetary Travel another book of mine. (In the foregoing we dismissed
the drag which in real life would exceedingly complicate the attain-
ment of such great velocities and perhaps render the task absolutely
impossible.)
Any of you who have read From the Earth to the Moon most likely re-
members the interesting passage describing the projectile's intersection
of the boundary where the Moon matches the Earth in attraction. Wondrous
things happened. All the objects inside the projectile became weight-
less; the travellers themselves began to float in the air.
There is nothing wrong in all this. What Jules Verne did lose sight
of was that this happens not only at the point the novelist gave. It
happens before and after as well in fact, as soon as free flight begins.
It seems incredible, doesn't it? I'm sure though that soon you will
be surprised not to have noticed this signal omission before. Let's
turn to Jules Verne for an example. You haven't forgotten how the
space travellers ejected the dead dog and how surprised they were to
see it continue to trail behind the projectile instead of falling back to
earth. Jules Verne described and explained this correctly. In a void
all bodies fall with the same speed, with gravity imparting an identical
acceleration to each. So, owing to gravity, both the projectile and the
dead dog should have acquired the same falling velocity (an identical
acceleration). Rather should we say that due to gravity their starting
velocities diminished in the same measure. Consequently, both should
whizz along with the same velocity; that is why after its ejection the
dead dog kept on trailing along in the projectile's wake.
Jules Verne's omission was: if the dead dog did not fall back to
earth again after the ejection, why should it fall when inside the pro-
jectile? The same forces act in both cases! The dead dog suspended in
mid-air inside the projectile should remain in that state as its speed is
absolutely the same as the projectile's; hence it is in a state of rest in
respect to the projectile.
44
What goes for the dead dog also goes for the travellers and all objects,
in general, inside the projectile, as they all fly along the trajectory
with the same speed as the projectile and should not fall, even though
having nothing to stand, sit, or lie on. One could take a chair, turn it
upside down and lift it to the ceiling; it won't fall "down", because
it will go on travelling together with the ceiling. One could sit on this
chair also upside down and not fall either. What, after all, could make
him fall? If he did fall or float down, this would mean that the projec-
tile's speed would bo greater than that of the man on the chair; other-
wise the chair wouldn't float or fall. But this is impossible since we
know that everything inside the projectile has the same acceleration
as the projectile itself. This was what Jules Verne failed to take into ac-
count. He thought everything inside the projectile would continue to
press down on its floor when it was in space. He forgot that a weight
presses down on what supports it only because this support is stationary.
But if both object and its support hurtle with the same velocity in
space they simply can't press down on each other.
So, as soon as the projectile began to fly further on by its own mo-
mentum, its travellers became completely weightless and could float
inside it, just as everything else could, too. That alone would have
immediately told the travellers whether they wore hurtling through
space or still inside the cannon. Jules Verne, however, says that in the
first half hour after the projectile was shot into space they couldn't
guess whether they were moving or not, however hard they tried.
"Nicholl and Barbicane looked at each other; they had not yet trou-
bled themselves about the projectile.
"'Well, are we really moving?' repeated Michel Ardan.
45
they are, where objects retain their equilibrium wherever they are
placed, where even water won't pour out of an inclined bottle. A pity
Jules Verne slipped up, when this offers such a delightful opportunity
for fantasy to run riot! (If this problem interests you, we could refer
you to the appropriate chapter in A. Sternfeld's Artificial Earth Sat-
ellites.)
Another method, called the "Borda method" after the scientist who
proposed it, is as follows:
Place the object you want to weigh on one of the pans. Then pour
sand or shot into the other pan till the scales balance. Remove your
object from' the pan but don't touch the sand or shot in the other
pan! and place weights in the emptied pan till the scales balance
again. Tote up these weights to find how much your object weighs.
This is also called "replacement weighing".
This simple method can also be used for a one-pan spring balance,
provided of course you have correct weights. In this case you don't
need either sand or shot. Just put your object on the pan and note the
reading. Then remove the object and place in the pan as many weights
as needed to get the same reading. Their combined weight will give the
weight of the object they replace.
46
How much can you lift with one arm? Let's say it's ten kilogrammes.
Does this amount qualify your arm's muscle-power? Oh, no. Your biceps
is much stronger. Fig. 27 shows how this muscle works. It is attached
close to the fulcrum of the lever that the bone of your forearm represents.
The load you are lifting acts on the other end of this live lever. The
distance between the load and the ful-
crum, that is, the joint, is almost eight
times more than that between the end
of the biceps and the fulcrum. This
means that if you are lifting a load
of 10 kg your biceps is exerting eight
times as much power, and, conse-
quently, could lift 80 kg.
47
Have you ever wondered why a needle so easily pierces things? Why
is it so easy to drive a needle through a piece of cloth or cardboard and
so hard to do the same thing with a blunt nail? After all, doesn't the
same force act in both cases? The force is the same, but the pressure
isn't. In the case of the needle the entire force is concentrated on its
point; in the case of the nail the same amount of force is distributed
over the larger area of the blunt end. So, though we exert the same
force, the needle gives a much greater pressure than the blunt
nail.
You all know that a twenty-toothed harrow loosens the soil more
deeply than a sixty-toothed one of the same weight. Why? Because the
load on each tooth of the first harrow is more than on each tooth of the
second.
For the same reason horses used in marshlands are shod in a special
fashion giving them a wider supporting area and lessening the pressure
exerted per square centimetre. For the same reason people take the same
precautions when they want to ci;oss a bog or thin ice, often crawling
to distribute their weight over a greater area.
Finally, tanks and caterpillar tractors don't get stuck in loose ground,
48
though they are very heavy, again because their weight is distributed
over a rather great supporting area. An eight-ton tractor exerts a pres-
sure of only 600 grammes per square centimetre. There are caterpil-
lars which exert a pressure of only 160 gr/cm 2 despite a two-ton load,
which makes for the easy crossing of peatbogs and sand-beaches. Here
it is a large supporting area which gives the advantage, whereas in Ihe
case of the needle it is the other way round.
This all shows that a sharpened edge pierces things only because it
has a very minute area for the force to act upon. That is why a sharp
knife cuts better than a blunt one: the force is concentrated on a small-
er area of the knife edge. To sum up: sharp objects prick and cut well,
because much pressure is concentrated on their points and edges.
42668 49
ATMOSPHERIC RESISTANCE
Every schoolboy knows that the air impedes a bullet in its flight.
Fow, however, know what a great impediment it is. Most think such
a "caressing" environment as the air which is something we usually
never feel could not really get in the way of a fast-flying rifle bullet.
Fig. 28. Flight of a bullet in the air and in a vacuum. The big arc is the
trajectory described when there is no atmosphere. The tiny, left-hand arc
However, one good glance at Fig. 28 will already make you realise
that the air places quite a serious obstacle in the bullet's way. The
large curve on the diagram designates the trajectory the bullet would de-
scribe were there no air. In this case, after flying out of a rifle tilt*
ed at 45, and with an initial velocity of 620 m/sec, the bullet would
describe a vast arc ten kilometres high and fly almost 40 km. But actu-
ally our bullet flies only 4 km, describing the tiny arc which is scarce-
ly noticeable side by side with the first one. That is what the resist*
ance of the air, the air drag, does!
4* 51
BIG BERTHA
The Germans were the first in 1918, towards the close of the First
World War, when French and British aircraft had put a stop to Ger-
man air raids to practise long-range artillery bombardment from a
distance of 100 kilometres and more.
Fig. 29. The range changes when the mouth of a long-distance gun is tilted
at different angles. In the case of angle 1, the projectile strikes P, and in the
case of angle 2, P' 9 but in the case of angle 3, it flies much farther as it goes
52P
Let me note that the greater the initial velocity of a bullet or shell,
the more resistance the air puts up, increasing, moreover, in proportion
to the square, cube, etc., of the velocity, depending on its amount.
Do you know why a kite soars when pulled forward by the twine?
If you do, you will also be able to understand why airplanes fly and
maple seeds float. You'll even be able to fathom to some extent the
causes of the boomerang's very odd behaviour. Because all these things
are related. The very same air which is so great an impediment to a
bullet or a shell enables the light maple seed to float and even heavy
airliners to fly.
53
right angles to MN. The force OC may be resolved into two forces by
constructing what is called a parallelogram of forces. This gives us the two
forces OD and OP. Of these two, the force OD pushes the kite back,
thus reducing its initial velocity. The other force, OP, pulls the kite up,
reducing its weight. When this force is big enough it overcomes the
weight of the kite and lifts it. That is why the kite goes up when
you pull it forwards.
The airplane is also a kite really, with the difference that its forward
motion, which makes it go up, is imparted not by our pulling at it
but by the propeller or jet engine. This is, of course, a very crude ex-
planation. There are other factors that cause an airplane to rise. They
are explained in Book Two of Physics for Entertainment under the
heading "Waves and Whirlwinds".
As you see aircraft are not made like birds, as one usually thinks,
but rather like flying squirrels or. flying fish, which, by the way, em-
ploy their flying mechanism not to fly up but merely to take rather big
leapsor what a flier would call "glides". In their case, the force OP
54
BALLOONING SEEDS
"The seeds of some plants retain their wings and parachutes only
while they fly. Thistle seeds quietly float until they encounter an
55
Figs. S3 and 34 show some seeds and fruits that have a gliding
mechanism. As a matter of fact these pJant "gliders" beat man-made
ones on many points. They can lift a load which may be much greater
than their own weight and automatically stabilise it. Thus if the
seed of the Indian jasmine should chance to turn over, it will autom-
atically regain its initial position with its convex side bottom-most,
but when it meets an obstacle it doesn't capsize and drop like a plum-
met, but coasts down instead.
the parachutist falls as if in empty space. If this were really so, the
delayed jump would be a much shorter affair, while the near-ground
velocity would be tremendous.
THE BOOMERANG
For long this ingenious weapon, the most perfect technical device
primitive man ever invented, had scientists wondcrstruck. Indeed,
the queer tangled trajectory the boomerang traces (Fig. 35} can
tease any mind. Nowadays we have an elaborate theory to explain
the boomerang; it is no longer a wonder. This theory is too intricate
to explain at length. Let me merely note that boomeranging is the
combined result of three factors: firstly, the initial throw; secondly,
the boomerang's own rotation, and thirdly, atmospheric resistance.
The Australian aborigine instinctively knows how to combine all
three, deftly changing the boomerang's tilt and direction, and he
throws it with a greater or smaller force to obtain the desired result.
57
*ig. 35. r Australian aborigine throwing a boomerang. The dotted line shows
the trajectory of the boomerang, should it miss its target
Fig.36. A cardboard boomer-
ang and how to "throw" it
58
warriors (see Fig. 38). It was also familiar in ancient Egypt and Nubia.
The Australian boomerang's only distinguishing feature is the propel-
ler-like twist that we mentioned, send ing it into such a maze of whirls
and loops, returning it to the thrower, should he miss.
CHAPTER FOUR
Mechanics gives us the answer. The whole trick is that a boiled egg
spins differently than a raw one. Take the egg, place it on a flat plate
and twirl it (Fig. 39). A cooked egg, especially a hard-boiled one, will
revolve much faster and longer than a raw one; as a matter of fact,
it is hard even to make the raw egg turn. A hard-boiled egg spins so
, quickly that it takes on the hazy form of a flat white ellipsoid.
If flicked sharply enough, it may even rise up to stand on its narrow
end.
The explanation lies in the fact that while a hard-boiled egg re-
volves as one whole, a raw egg doesn't; the latter's liquid contents do not
60
Open an umbrella, stand it up with its top on the floor and twist the
handle. You can easily make it revolve rather quickly. Now throw a
little ball or a crumpled piece of paper into the umbrella. It won't stay
there; it will be shot out by what has wrongly come to be called the
"centrifugal force" but which is actually nothing but a manifestation
of the force of inertia. The ball or piece of paper will be thrown off, not
along the continuation of the radius but at a tangent to the circular mo-
tion.
At some public parks one may find an amusement (Fig. 41) based on
this principle of rotation, where you may try out the law of inertia on
yourself. This is a sort of whirligig with a round floor on which people
either stand, sit, or lie. A concealed motor starts the floor revolving,
61
Fig. 41. A whirligig. Centrifugal forces are hurling the boys off
The Earth itself is, in point of fact, a huge whirligig. Though it doesn't
burl us off, it does reduce our weight. At the equator, where rotation
is fastest, one can "shed" a 300th of one's weight in this manner.
This, plus another factor, the Earth's compression, reduces weight at
the equator by about 0.5% or 1 /200th. An adult person will con-
sequently weigh 300 grammes less at the equator than at any of
the poles.
INKY WHIRLWINDS
Make a teetotum, as shown in life size in Fig. 42, out of white card-
board and a match sharpened at one end. No particular knack is needed
to twirl it it's something any child can do. But though a child's
toy, it can be very instructive. Do the following. Spill a few drops
of ink on it and set it spinning before the ink dries. When it stops, look
62
to see what has happened to the ink drops. They will have drawn
whorls a miniature whirlwind.
Incidentally, this resemblance is not accidental. The whorls on the
teetotum trace the movement of the ink drops, which undergo exactly
what you experienced on the revolving floor. As the drop shoots away
from the centre due to centrifugal forces, it reaches a place on the
teetotum having a greater speed of rotation than the speed of the drop
itself. Here the disc spins faster than the drop which seems to glide away,
lagging behind the radial "spokes", as it were. That is why the drops
curve, and we see the trace of curvilinear motion.
The same is true for air currents diverging from a centre of high at-
mospheric pressure (in "anticyclones"), or converging in a centre of
low atmospheric pressure (in "cyclones"). The ink whorls depict these
stupendous whirlwinds in miniature.
63
64
Though the right-hand weights are always farther from the centre,
you are sure to have a position when they will be less in number than
those on the left-hand side. Look at Fig. 44 once again. You see only
four right-hand weights and eight left-hand ones. The entire arrange-
ment is thus balanced. The wheel will never turn; it will only swing
a bit and then come to rest in this position. (The motion of this ma-
chine is explained by the so-called theorem of momenta.)
compartments
But this will never happenfor the same reason as the wheel in Fig.
44 doesn't turn. Still, in Los Angeles a tremendous wheel of this nature
(Fig. 46) was built to advertise a cafe. Actually it was a fake, being
66
"No," they replied, their heads aLanging, "it was covered up with a
newspaper. "
"THE SNAG"
Many ingenious home-taught Russian inventors tackled the fasci-
nating problem of a "perpetual motion" machine. One, the Siberian
peasant Alexander Shcheglov, is described under the name of Burgher
Prezentov by the well-known 19th-century Russian satirist Saltykov-
Shchedrin in his Modern Idyll. Below the writer describes a visit to the-
inventor's workshop:
5* 67
' "'We've heard that you've applied the law of perpetual motion in
practice. Is that true?' I began.
"'I really don't know how to put it/ he returned in confusion. '1
think I've done it.'
"He led us up to the wheel and then took us around to the other side..
It was a wheel all right, from either side.
"'Does it turn?'
"He gripped the rim with bolh hands, swung it back and forth sever*
al times, then pushed it with all his might. Th? wheel began to turn.
It made several turns rather quickly and smoothly. One could hear
the bags of sand inside the rim banging against the boards and sliding
away. Then the wheel began to turn more and more slowly. We heard
a rasping and a creaking and, finally, the wheel stopped altogether.
It was of course not the "snag" or the "real stuff" that was at fault, but
. the wrong principle at the root. The wheel turned for a time owing to
the impetus that the inventor gave it, but was bound to stop when
friction exhausted the imparted outside energy.
,68
Perm Gubernia who died in 1884. Karon in, who changed the name in'
the story to Pykhtin, describes the machine in great detail.
44 'That's it.'
44 'How else?'
"'A horse? What for? It turns by itself,' Pykhtin returned and began
to demonstrate the monster's workings.
"'It's them balls that do it. Look. First it goes whack into this
scoop. Then it flies like lightning along that groove, is scooped
up by that scoop, flies like mad back Co that wheel and again gives
it a good push so hard thai it even begins to whine. Meanwhile another
ball is on its way. Again it flies along and goes whack here. From here
it dashes plong the groove and strikes that scoop, skips to the wheel,
and again uhack! That's how it goes. Wait, I'll start it off.'
Karonin claims that Goldyrev's machine moved. But this was pat-
ently a misunderstanding. The wheel could have turned only \ihile
the balls were dropping down at the expense of the potential energy
accumulated when lifted, much in the manner of the weights of a pen-
dulum clock. However, it couldn't have turned long because when all
the lifted balls had "whacked" against the scoops and had slipped
69.
UFIMTSEV'S ACCUMULATOR
TO
inclined plane. He deserves far greater fame than befell him for his
many major discoveries that we now constantly address ourselves to.
These are decimal fractions, the introduction of denominators in al-
gebra, and the establishment of the hydrostatic law that Pascal redis-
covered later.
take the place of those that slide "'off and "equilibrium would
never be restored. But we know that a chain disposed in Ibis fashion
does not move of its own accord at all It is quite obvious that the two
spheroids on the right really offset the four on the loft.
It seems a minor miracle, doesn't it? Two spheroids pull with the
same force as four! This enabled Stevin to deduce an important law
of mechanics. This is how he reasoned. The two parts the long one
and the short one possess a different weight, ono being as many times
heavier than the other as the longer side of the prism is longer than the
short side. Consequently, any two linked lofds in general balance on
tilted planes, provided their weight is directly proportional to the
length of these planes.
of -the body as the length of the plane is greater than its height. So*
did the idea that a "perpetual motion" machine is impossible led to
an important discovery in the realm of mechanics.
fig. 48. Is this a "perpot- Many visitors tried to stop it but it went on
ual motion" machine? turning as soon as they took their hands off
turned precisely because of the effort he made to stop it. The backward
push he gave to stop it wound up the spring of an artfully concealed
mechanism.
72
"The inventor's last words were: One hundred thousand thalers and
you get the machine. "
Who was this mysterious Councillor Orffyreus and what was his
"famous machine" really like? I was able to learn something both
about the Councillor himself and his machine.
Orffyreus 's real name was Bessler. He was born in Germany in 1680.
He studied theology, medicine and painting before he essayed the "per-
petual motion" machine. Among the many thousands who tried to
invent such a machine he is probably the most famous and, at any rate,
the luckiest. Till the end of his days he died in 1745 he lived in
comfort on the income he netted by demonstrating his contraption.
73
Fig. 49. Orffyreus's self-moving wheel which Peter the Great wanted to buy. (From
an old drawing.)
On November 12, 1717, the machine was placed in a room all apart
and set into motion. The room was then locked and sealed, and two
grenad iers" were posted outside. For a whole fortnight, until the seal
was broken on November 26, no one dared to come near. Thon the room
was unlocked and the Landgrave and his retinue entered. The wheel
was still spinning "with undiminishing speed". It was stopped, in-
spected carefully, and again set going. Now the room was locked and
sealed for 40 days on end with grenadiers again stationed at the
door. The seal was broken on January 4, 1718. A commission of experts
entered and found that the wheel was still going. But this did not sat-
isfy the Landgrave and he staged a third trial, locking up the machine
for two whole months at a stretch. When he found the wheel still going
74
Orffyreus was showered with offers, one better than the other. Kings
and princes bestowed munificent awards. Poets composed odes in honour
of his wonder-wheel. But there were some who thought him a charlatan.
The more daring openly accused him, even offering 1,000 marks to
anyone who would come forth and expose the councillor. One lampoon
against him gave a drawing which is reproduced in Fig. 50 and which
provides a rather simple explanation for the mystery a cunningly
hidden person who pulled at a rope wound round that part of the axle
which was concealed in the pillars supporting the wheel.
The trick was bared by chance only because the councillor had had
a tiff with his wife and maid who had both been initiated into the
secret. Otherwise we would probably still be guessing. It seemed that
the notorious machine was indeed turned by a hidden person Orffyre-
us's brother, or maid pulling at a slender cord. But the councillor
did not lose face, persistently assuring all and sundry even on his death-
bed that his wife and maid had maligned him out of spite. However,
trust in him was shattered. No wonder he tried to drum into the head
of the tsar's envoy, Schumacher, the point that human beings were full
of malice.
75
Fig. 50. The secret of Orffyreus's machine.
(From an old drawing.)
Around the same time there also lived in Germany another renowned
"perpetual motion" machine inventor, one Hertner. Schumacher wrote
of his contraption the following: "Herr Hertner's perpetuum mobile,
which I saw in Dresden, consists of tarpaulin filled with sand and a
grinder-like machine which turns forwards and backwards by itself.
However the inventor says it cannot be made larger." Undoubtedly
this machine, too, gave no "perpetual motion", being at best an artfully
contrived device with a just as artfully concealed livingbut by
no means "perpetual motion" machine. Schumacher was right when
he wrote to Peter the Great that French and English scholars "mock
these perpetuum mobiles as objectionable to principles of mathematics".
CHAPTER FIVE
enough, you will never be able to fill the coffee-pot up to the top; the
water will simply keep on spilling out. Usually the spout is even a
bit higher than the top of the coffee-pot to enable one to incline it
without spilling out its contents.
IGNORANCE OF ANCIENTS
78
Even people who have never studied physics know that liquids press
down on the bottom of the vessels holding them and sideways at the
walls. Many, however, have never suspected that liquids also press
upwards. An ordinary lamp-glass will easily reveal this. Cut out of
a piece of thick cardboard a disc large enough to cover the top of the
lamp-glass. Cover the top of the glass
with it and then dip the glass into a
jar of water as shown in Fig. 53. To
prevent the disc from slipping off when
the lamp is immersed, tie a piece of
thread to it and hold it as shown, or
simply press it down with your finger.
After you have dipped the glass far
enough, you" can let the thread, or your
finger, go. The disc will remain where it
is, being kept in place by the water
pressing up on it.
off, because the pressure exerted by the water on the disc from below
is offset by the pressure v exerted on it from above by the column of
water in the glass, the height of which is equal to the depth to which
the glass has been dipped. Such is the law concerning the pressure that
a liquid exerts on any immersed body. This incidentally results
in that "loss" of weight Jn liquids of which Archimedes's famous prin-
ciple speaks.
waids
79
WHICH IS HEAVIER?
Which is heavier?
addition to the water. Others said the pail of water without the piece of
wood would be heavier, since water generally weighs more than wood.
Neither were right. Both pails weigh the same. The second pail, true,
contains less water than the first one, because the wood displaces some
of the water. But, according to the related law, every floating body
displaces with its immersed part exactly as much liquid (in weight) as
the whole of this body weighs. That is why the scales balance.
Now try to solve another problem. Take a glass of water, put it on
one of the pans, and put a weight next to it. Balance the scales. Then
drop the weight next to the glass into it. What happens to the scales?
According to Archimedes's principle, in the water the weight should
weigh less than when on the pan.
We are used to thinking that liquids have no shape of their own. That
is not true.
Since olive oil floats in water but sinks in alcohol we can mix the
two in such proportions that the oil will neither sink nor float in this
mixture. An odd thing happens when we drip in a little oil with the
help of an eyedropper. The oil collects into a large round drop which
neither floats nor sinks, but hangs suspended (Fig. 56). To get a true
image of the sphere, you should do the experiment in a flat- walled
62668 31
by means of a rod
The Belgian physicist Plateau was the first to conduct this instruc-
tive experiment, of which I have given you the classical description.
It would be much easier and just as instructive to do this experi-
ment in another way. Take a small tumbler, rinse it with water, and
fill it with olive oil. Place it on the bottom of a larger glass. Then
carefully pour into the glass enough alcohol to cover the tumbler.
Gradually add a little water with the help of a spoon. Do this very
carefully, so that the water drips down the walls of the glass. The top
of the oil in the tumbler starts to bulge, and when enough water has
swim inside it and assume the form of a large drop. At room tem-
perature you can suspend an aniline drop in a solution of table salt.
Another convenient liquid is the dark-crimson opthotoluidine, which
at 24 C has the same density as salt water, into which it is poured.
Fig. 58. Plateau's experiment
simplified
I noted earlier that any liquid will assume its natural spherical
shape when gravity ceases to act on it. You need only remember what
I said before about a falling body having no weight and discount the
negligible atmospheric resistance when a body starts to fall (raindrops
accelerate only when they start to fall; by the second half of the first
second the fall already becomes uniform and the drop's weight is offset
by atmospheric resistance which grows together with the velocity of
the falling drop) to realise that falling portions of liquid should also
take on a spherical form.
That is really so. Falling raindrops are indeed round in shape. Shot
is nothing but solidified drops of molten lead which in the process
of making are dropped from a great height into a cold water bath
where they solidify in the shape of absolutely right spheres. Shot is
also called "tower" shot because in its making it is dropped from the
top of a tall "shot tower" (Fig. 59). These towers are metal structures
45 m high. At the top they have a shot-pouring shop with boilers for
melting the lead, and at the bottom a water bath. The ready shot is
then graded and processed. The drop of molten lead solidifies into shot
while falling. The water bath is needed merely to soften the impact and
UNPLEASANT PROPERTY
Anyone who has ever had to handle a kerosene lamp most likely
knows what annoying surprises it can spring on one. You fill a tank with
it and then wipe the tank dry on the outside. An hour later it's wet
Fig. 60. How many
pins in the wine-
glass?
again. You have only yourself to blame. You probably didn't screw
on the burner tight enough, and the kerosene, trying to spread along
the glass, seeped out. To avert such "surprises", screw the burner
on as tight as you can. But when you do that, don't forget to see that
the tank is not full up to the brim. When it warms up, kerosene
expands rather considerably increasing in volume by a tenth every
time the temperature rises by another 100. So if you don't want the
tank to explode, you must leave some room for the kerosene to
expand.
"And that oil oozed up and ruined the sunset; and as for the moon-
beams, they positively reeked of paraffin....
"We left the boat by the bridge, and took a walk through the town
to escape it, but it followed us. The whole town was full of oil." (Ac-
tually it was only the clothing of the travellers that reeked of paraf-
fin oil.)
66
It's to be found not only in fairy tales. A few easy experiments will
show you that such things really exist. Start with a small object a
needle, for instance. It seems impossible to make a steel needle float,
doesn't it? But it isn't really so hard to< simul- easy potential accumulated operated clockwork intervals
steady. gear-wheel compels place. reverse falls, tom bot- lifts levers system pheric atmos- separately;
frame. other, mouth vessels, cury mer- barometer, mercurial reproduced. drawings Ferguson Luckily knows
nobody Unfortunately execution. design seen, cleverest detail examined say frank, removed. rometer ba-
stop barometer. arranged ly curious- falling endless stopping says, ?I scribes de- 1774 guson Fer- James
astronomer mechanic British well-known stop. himself availed inventor 103 aneroid arrow depending falls
seen Everybody nature. haustible inex- interference, machine, invent trying futility ?PERPETUAL?
balloons.) bounc- Entertainment Mechanics wind. jump effort, balloon. bouncing tied boon Dressed, naked.
stark ?ballooned certainly true, shaky, felt He floor. remained fat weighed belongings watch, shoes, suit,
Pyecraft?s gr displaced kg; scarcely was, Pyecraft Mr. However gr. 80 weigh displace 770 density usual
Air kg. reckon pockets clothes ?up ?floated imedes?s ch Ar- risen lost Firstly, objections physics.
conformity glance air-?? luggage clothes, slip shipwreck. fear ?You me. came idea happier ?A 102 travel?
Pyecraft; abroad prisoner Instead donel te lead, carry boots, lead-soled underclothes ?em Sew discs. ?stamp
said, lead,? sheet ?Buy him said. ?To tears. received ?Pyecraft done. mischief said underclothing,? ?Lead
blurted complete calculate ?And unnecessary.? ?all Pyecraftl? Jove, ?By struck ceiling, Turkey tacking
cornice, corner favourite whisky, drinking sitting me.) got fatal (Then, level.... wanted cling skirting,
staples agreed came. held volumes pulled shelves. edition) (tenth Encyclopaedia wanted, ho hit bookcase.
laid meals ladder library inversions.) amazing lady matter-of-fact beautifully ful delight- (Afterwards
squabbling said; housekeeper, confide button coverlet sheet, blanket, tapes, fasten mattress, shake-up
possible, difficulty. ?But sleep,? ??I difficult business. sensible conditions. adapt ...I up....? do. ?that
evident,? ...?There?s .? him. talked hearthrug balloon, captive wallowed did, that? heavy. mahogany ?is
pointing, table,? ??That windy flag holding waa somewhere. foothold about, kicked you!? help ?Let liked
delighted. ?Somehow weight.? weight. nessl fat* cure ?what Pyecraft,? ??By understood. then, complete.?
??Loss ??How?? successful.? ?Too prescription,? ?That upside lectic-looking apop- fat, great, spectacle,
extraordinary ?It mantel. carefully, tried salient went Bump sofa. smashed pic- flew way, spoke carelessly
engraving framed hold ?He great-gran ?Your panted, clamber thrust struggle position. floated bladder gas-
filled floating realised abruptly there?? ?are deuce,? ??How gesticulated. you,? ?Til agonised. looked
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140
"They say that the kaleidoscope was known way back in the 17th
century. At any rate, some time ago it was revived and perfected in
England to cross the Channel a couple of months ago. One rich French-
man ordered a kaleidoscope for 20,000 francs, with pearls and gems in-
stead of coloured bits of glass and beads. "
For long the kaleidoscope was nothing more than an amusing toy.
Today it is used in pattern designing. A device has been invented to
photograph the kaleidoscope figures and thus mechanically provide
sundry ornamental patterns.
141
Everybody familiar with the laws that govern the reflection of light
will realise how the illusion is produced. Since we have here three pairs
of parallel mirrors and ten pairs of mirrors set at angles to each other, no
wonder they give so many reflections.
Fig. 107
Many think the fact that light refracts when passing from medium to
medium is one of Nature's whims. They simply can't understand why
light does not keep on in the same direction as before but has to strike
out obliquely. Do you think so too? Then you'll probably be delighted
to learn that light behaves just as a marching column of soldiers does when
they step from a paved road to one full of ruts.
144
When passing from that part of the table where velocity is greater
(the uncovered part) to that part where velocity is less (the covered
part), the direction ( "the ray ") is nearer to the "normal incidence ". When
rolling the other way the direction is farther away from the normal.
Can a crooked route really bring us sooner to our destination than the
straight one? Yes when we move with different speeds along different
sections of our route. Villagers living between two railway stations A
and B 9 but closer to A, prefer to walk or cycle to station A and board
the train there for station J?, if they want to get to station B faster,
than to take the shorter way which is straight to station /?.
Tf
102668
horseman would pick that route. After all, since it takes a longer time
to cross sand, a cavalryman would rightly think it better to cut the time
spent by crossing the sand less obliquely. This would naturally length-
en his way across the turf. But since the horse would take him
across it twice as fast, this longer distance would actually mean less
time spent. In other words, the horseman should follow a road that
would refract on the boundary between sand and turf, moreover, with
the path across the turf forming a wider angle with the perpendicular
to this boundary than the path across the sand.
Turf
Sand
Anyone will realise that the straight path AC is actually not the quick-
est way and that considering the different width of the two strips and
the distances as given in Fig. 110, the messenger will reach his destina-
tion sooner if he takes the crooked road AEC (Fig. 111). Fig. 110 gives
us a strip of sand two kilometres wide, and a strip of turf three kilome-
tres wide. The distance BC is seven kilometres. According to Pythagoras,
the entire route from A to C (Fig. Ill) is equal to J/ 5 2 + 7 2
=8.6 km. Section .47V across the sand is two- fifths of this, or3.44 km.
Since it takes twice as long to cross sand than it does to cross turf, the
3.44 km of sand mean from the time angle 6.88 km of turf. Hence the
8.6 km straight-line route AC is equivalent to 12.04 km across turf. Let
us now reduce to "turf" the crooked AEC route. Section AE is two kilo-
146
As you see, the "short" straight road is 12 km across turf, while the
"long" crooked road only 11.6 km across turf, wmcn thus saves 12.00
11.60=0.40 km, or nearly half a kilometre. But this is still not the
quickest way. This, according to theory, is that we snail have to invoke
trigonometry in which the ratio of the sine of angle b to the sine of
angle a is the same as the ratio of the velocity across turf to that across
sand, i. e., a ratio of 2:1. In other words, we must pick a direction along
which the sine of angle b would be twice the sine of angle a. Accord-
ingly, we must cross the boundary bet ween the sand and turf at point M,
f*
which is one kilometre away from point E. Then sine b = ./ &*& , while
1 sin 66161
which is exactly the ratio of the two velocities. What would this route,
10* 147
The Format principle applies not only to light. Sound and all waves in
general, whatever their nature, travel in accord with this principle.
Since you probably want to know why, lot me quote from a paper which
the eminent physicist Schrodingor read in 1933 in Stockholm when re-
ceiving the Nobel Prize. Speaking of how light travels through a medi-
um with a gradually changing density, he said:
"Let the soldiers each firmly grasp one long stick to keep strict breast-
line formation. Then the command rings out: Double! Quick! If the
ground gradually changes, first the right end, and then the left end will
move faster, and the breast-line will swing round. Note that the route
covered is not straight but crooked. That it strictly conforms to the
shortest, as far as the time of arrival at the destination over this partic-
ular ground is concerned, is quite clear, as each soldier tried to run as
fast as he could . "
If you have read Jules Verne's Mysterious Island, you might re-
member how its heroes, when stranded on a desert isle, lit a fire though
they had no matches and no flint, steel and tinder. It was lightning that
helped Defoe's Robinson Crusoe; by pure accident it struck a tree and set
fire to it. But in Jules Verne's novel it was the resourcefulness of an edu-
cated engineer and his knowledge of physics that stood the heroes in
good stead. Do you remember how amazed that naive sailor Pencroft
was when, coming back from a hunting trip, he found the engineer and
the reporter seated before a blazing bonfire?
"'The sun!'
"Gideon Spilett was quite right in his reply. It was the sun that had
148
furnished the heat which so astonished Pencroft. The sailor could scarce
ly believe his eyes, and he was so amazed that he did not think of
questioning the engineer.
I dare say you would like to know why the space between the two
watch glasses had to be filled with water. After all, wouldn't an air-
filling focus the sun's rays well enough? Not at all. A watch glass is
bounded by two outer and inner parallel (concentric) surfaces.
Physics tells us that when light passes through a medium bounded by
such surfaces it hardly changes its direction at all. Nor does it bend
when passing through the second watch glass. Consequently, the rays
of light cannot be focussod on ono point. To do this we must fill up the
empty space between the glasses with a transparent substance that would
refract rays better than air does. And that is what Jules Verne's engi-
neer did.
149
much less, and, secondly, because water intensively absorbs the infra-
red rays which are so very essential for heating bodies.
It is curious to note that the ancient Greeks were aware of the igni-
tion effect of glass lenses a thousand odd years before eyeglasses and
spyglasses were invented. Aristophanes speaks of it in his famous com*
edy The Cloud. Socrates propounds the following] problem to Strop-
tiadis:
"Were one to write a promissory note on you for five talents, how
would you destroy it?
I might explain that in Aristophanes 's days the Greeks used to write
on waxed tablets which easily melted.
"'That's a great pity, ' the doctor remarked , 'because the sun is strong
enough to light tinder.'
ISO
"We'll have to eat the boar raw, then,' said the captain.
"'As a last resort, yes/ the doctor pensively replied. 'But why not.,.. 1
"'Why not? We must focus the sun's rays on the tinder and a piece
of ice can do that. Fresh-water ice is hotter though it's more transpar-
ent and less liable to break. 1
"'The ice boulder over there,' the bosun pointed to a boulder som
hundred steps away, 'seems to be what wo need.'
"'Yes. Take your axe and let's go.'
"The three walked over to the boulder and found that it was indeed
of fresh-water ice.
"The doctor told the bosun to chop off a chunk of about a foot in diam-
eter, and then he ground it down with his axe, his knife, and finally
polished it with his hand and produced a very good, transparent burn-
ing-glass. The doctor focussed the sun's bright rays on the tinder which
began to blaze a few seconds later. "
knife and "one's hand " in a frost of 48C below zero. There is, however,
a much simpler way: pour some water into a bowl of the proper shape,
freeze it, and then take out the ice by slightly heating the bottom of the
bowl. Such a "burning-glass" will work only in the open air on a clear
and frosty day. Inside a room behind closed windows it is out of the
question, because the glass panes absorb much of the solar energy and
what is left of it is not strong enough.
HELPING SUNLIGHT
152
"I took a number of little square pieces of broad cloth from a tailor's
pattern card, of various colours. There were black, deep blue, lighter
blue, green, purple, red. yellow, white, and other colours, or shades of
colours. I laid them all out upon the snow in a bright sunshiny morn-
ing. In a few hours (I cannot now be exact as to the time), the black,
being wanned most by the sun, was sunk so low as to he below the stroke
of the sun's rays; the dark blue almost as low, the lighter blue not quite
so much as the dark, the other colours less as they were lighter; and
the quite white remained on the surface of the snow, riot having en-
tered it at all.
"What signifies philosophy that does not apply to some use? May
we not learn from hence, that black clothes arc not so fit to wear in a hot
sunny climate or season, as white ones; because in such clothes the body
is more heated by the sun when we walk abroad, and we are at the same
time heated by the exercise, which double heat is apt to bring on putrid
dangerous fevers?... That summer hats for men or women' should be
white, as repelling that heat which gives headaches to many, and to some
the fatal stroke that the French call the coup de soleil?... That fruit
walls being blacked may receive so much heat from the sun in the day-
time, as to continue warm in some degree through the night, and there-
by preserve the fruit from frosts, or forward its growth? with sun-
dry other particulars of less or greater importance, that will occur from
time to time to attentive minds? "
The benefit that can be drawn from this knowledge was well illus-
trated during the expedition to the South Pole that the Germans
made aboard the good ship Haussin. 1903. The ship was jammed by ice-
packs and all methods usually applied in such circumstances explo-
sives and ice-saws proved abortive. Solar rays were then invoked. A
two-kilometre long strip, a dozen metres in width, of dark ash and coal
was strewn from the ship's bow to the nearest rift. Since this happened
during the Antarctic summer, with its long and clear days, the sun was
able to accomplish what dynamite and saws had failed to do. The ice
melted and cracked all along the strip, releasing the ship from its
clutches.
153
MIRAGES
I suppose you all know what causes a mirage. The blazing sun heats
up the desert sands and lends to them the property of a mirror because
the density of the hot surface layer of air is less than the strata higher
up. Oblique rays of light from a remote object meet this layer of air and
curve upwards from the ground as if reflected by a mirror after striking
it at a very obtuse angle. The desert-traveller thus thinks he is seeing a
sheet of water which reflects the objects standing on its banks (Fig. 115).
Fig. 115. Desert mirages explained. This drawing, usually given in textbooks,
shows too steeply the ray's course towards the ground
Rather should we say that the hot surface layer of air reflects not like a
mirror but like the surface of water when viewed from a submarine.
This is not an ordinary reflection but what physicists call total reflec-
tion, which occurs when light enters the layer of air at an extremely
obtuse angle, far greater than the one in the figure. Otherwise the "crit-
ical angle" of incidence will not be exceeded.
154
There is one more type of mirage a side one which people usually
do not have the faintest suspicion about. This mirage, which has been
Sas f secn SS WalT IfSSS tenin g mirror on the ri & ht " as Photographed
polished from point A, and from point A'. The ordinary grey concrete
wall F 1 from point A' WftU Qn the left naturally cannot reflect the
two soldiers near it. But the same wall, miraculously transformed into
a mirror on the right, does symmetrically reflect the closer of the two
soldiers. Of course it isn't the wall itself that reflects him, but its surface
layer of hot air. If on a hot summer day you pay notice to walls of
big buildings, you might spot a mirage of this kind.
"Have you ever seen the sun dip into the horizon at sea? No doubt,
you have. Have you ever watched it until the upper rim touches the
horizon and then disappears? Probably you have. But have you ever
noticed what happens on the instant when our brilliant luminary sheds
its last ray provided the sky is a cloudless, pellucid blue? Probably
not. Don't miss this opportunity. You will see, instead of a red ray, one
of an exquisite green that no artist could ever reproduce and that nature
156
Fig. 118. Rough, grey wall (left) suddenly seems to act like
a polished mirror (right)
Where does the green ray or flash come from? Recall what you saw
when you looked at something through a prism. Try the following. Hold
the prism at eye level with its broad horizontal plane turned downwards
and look through it at a piece of paper tacked to the wall You will see
the sheet firstly loom and secondly display a violet-blue rim at the
top and a yellow-red edge at the bottom. The elevation is due to refrac-
tion, while the coloured rims owe their origin to the property of glass
157
We see the earth's atmosphere as a vast prism of air, with its base
facing us. Looking at the sun on the horizon we sec it through a prism
of gas. The solar disc has a blue-green fringe on top and a yellow-red
one at the bottom. While the sun is above the horizon, its disc's bril-
liant colour outshines all other less bright bands of colour and we
don't see them at all. But during the sunrises and sunsets, when practi-
cally the entire disc of the sun is below the horizon, we may spot the
blue double-tinted fringe on the upper rim, with an azure blue right on
top and a paler blue produced by the mixing of green and blue be-
low it. When the air near the horizon is clear and translucent, we see a
blue fringe, or the "blue ray". But often the atmosphere disperses the
blues and we see only the remaining green fringe the "green ray".
However, most often a turbid atmosphere disperses both blues and greens
and then we see no fringe at all, the setting sun assuming a crimson red.
158
intensively disperses blues and greens, or, in other words, the whole
of the upper rim of the solar disc. "On the other hand, " he continues,
"when the setting sun scarcely changes its customary whitish yellow
and is very bright [in other words, when atmospheric absorption of light
is insignificant Y.P.] you may quite likely expect the green flash.
However, it is important for the horizon to be a distinct straight line
with no uneven relief, forests or buildings. We have all those condi-
tions at sea, which explains why seamen are familiar with the green
flash. "
To sum up: to see the "green ray", you must observe the sun when
setting or rising and when the sky is extremely clear. Since the sky
at the horizon in southern climes is much more translucent than in
northern latitudes, one is liable to see the "green ray" there much of-
tener. But neither in our latitudes is it so rare as many think most
likely, I suppose, because of Jules Verne. You will detect the "green ray"
sooner or later as long as you look hard enough. This phenomenon baa
been seen even in a spyglass.
159
Fig. 119. Protracted observation of the "green ray"; it was seen beyond the moun-
tain range for 5 minutes. Top right-hand corner: the "green ray" as seen in a spy-
glass. The Sun's disc has a ragged shape. 1. The Sun's blinding glare prevents us
from seeing the green fringe with the unaided eye. 2. The "green ray" can be scon
with the unaided eye when the Sun has almost completely set
behind a distant mountain and the quickly walking observer saw the
green fringe as seemingly sliding down the hill (Fig. 119).
The instances recorded when the "green ray" has been observed dur-
in? a sunrise that is, when the upper rim of our celestial luminary peeps
out above the horizon are extremely instructive, as they debunk the
frequent suggestion that the phenomenon is presumably nothing more
than an oDtical illusion to which the eye succumbs owing to the fatigue
caused by looking at the brilliant setting sun. Incidentally, the sun is
not the only celestial object lhat sheds the "green ray ". Venus has also
produced it when setting. (You will find more about mirages and the
green flash in M. Minaert's superb book Light and Colour in Nature.)
CHAPTER NINE
VISION
"'Having your likeness taken, sir,' replied the stout turnkey. 'We're
capital hands at likeness here. Take 'em in no time, and always exact.
Walk in, sir, and make yourself at home.'
"Mr. Pickwick complied with the invitation, and sat himself down:
when Mr. Weller, who stationed himself at the back of the chair, whis-
pered that the sitting was merely another term for undergoing an in-
spection by the different turnkeys, in order that they might know prison-
ers from visitors.
"'Well, Sam,' said Mr. Pickwick. 'Then] I wish the artists would
come. This is rather a public place.'
"As Mr. Weller made this philosophical remark, Mr. Pickwick was
aware that his sitting had commenced. The stout turnkey having been
112668 161
relieved from the lock, sat down, and looked at him carelessly, from
time to time, while a long thin man who had relieved him, thrust his hands
beneath his coat-tails, and planting himself opposite, took a good long
view of him. A third, rather surly-looking gentleman: who had apparent-
ly been disturbed at his tea, for he was disposing of the last remnant of
a crust and butter when he came in: stationed himself close to Mr. Pick-
wick; and, resting his hands on his hips, inspected him narrowly; while
two others mixed with the group, and studied his features with most
intent and thoughtful faces. Mr. Pickwick winced a good deal under
the operation, and appeared to sit very uneasily in his chair; but he
made no remark to anybody while it was being performed, not even to
Sam, who reclined upon the back of the chair, reflecting, partly on the
situation of his master, and partly on the great satisfaction it would
have afforded him to make a fierce assault upon all the turnkeys
there assembled, one after the other, if it were lawful and peaceable
so to do.
"At length the likeness was completed, and Mr. Pickwick was in-
formed, that ho might now proceed into the prison."
Still earlier it was a list of "features" that did for such memorised
"portraits". In his Boris Godunov, Pushkin tells us how Grigory Otrc-
pyev was described in the tsar's edict: "Of short stature, and broad
chest; one arm is shorter than the other; the eyes are blue and hair gin-
ger; a wart on one cheek and another on the forehead. " Today we necdr '*.
do that; we simply provide a photograph instead.
162
public quite a time to get used to the idea. One old Russian magazine
for 1845 contains quite an amusing anecdote on the score:
"Many still cannot believe that the daguerreotype acts by itself. One
gentleman came to have his portrait done. The owner [the photographer
Y.P.] begged him to be seated, adjusted the lenses, inserted a plate,
glanced at his watch, and retired. While the owner was present, the gen-
tleman sat as if rooted to the spot. But he had barely gone out when
the gentleman thought it no longer necessary to sit still; he rose, took a
pinch of snuff, examined the camera from every side, put his eye to the
Ions, shook his head, mumbled, 'How ingenious,' and began to meander
up and down the room.
"'But that was exactly when you should have sat still. 9
Still, there are some things about photography that many do not know.
Few, incidentally, know how one should look at a photograph. Indeed,
it's not so simple as one might think, though photography has been in
existence for more than a century now and is as common as could be.
Nevertheless, even professionals don't look at photographs in the prop*
er way.
The camera is based on the same optical principle as our eye. Every-
thing projected onto its ground -glass screen depends on the (distance
between the lens and the object. The camera gives a perspective, which
we would get with one eye note that! were our eye to replace the
lens. So, if you want to obtain from a photograph the same visual im-
pression that the photographed object produced, we must, firstly, look
at the photograph with one eye only, and, secondly, hold it at the prop-
er distance away,
After all, when you look at a photograph with both eyes the picture
you get is flat and not three-dimensional. This is the fault of our own
vision. When we look at something solid the image it causes on the
11* 163
retina of either eye is not the same (Fig. 120). This is mainly why we
see objects in relief. Our brain blends the two different images into one
that springs into relief this is the basic principle of the stereoscope.
On the other hand, if we are looking at something that is flat a wall,
for instance both eyes get an identical sensory picture telling our brain
that the object we are looking at is really flat.
Since most cameras have a focal length of 12-15 cm (the author has
in mind the cameras that were in use when he wrote his Physics for
Entertainment Ed.), we shall never be able to get the proper distance
for the photographs they give, as the focal length of a normal eye at best
(25 cm) is nearly twice the indicated focal length of the camera lens.
A photograph tacked on a wall also seems flat because it is looked at
from a still greater distance away. Only the short-sighted with their
short focal length of vision, as well as children, who are able to accom-
modate their vision to see objects very close up, will be able to admire
the effect that an ordinary photograph produces when we look at it
properly with one eye, because when they hold a photograph 12-15 cm
away, they get not a flat image but one in relief the kind of image a
stereoscope produces.
I suppose you will now agree with me in noting that it is only due to
ignorance that we do not derive the pleasure a photograph can give,
and that we often unjustly blame them for being lifeless.
165
I am sure you will agree that this does not pick any holes in the theory
of stereoscopic vision.
The same principle lies at the root of the curious effect produced by
the so-called panoramas, that are sold at toy shops. This is a small box,
in which an ordinary photograph a landscape or a group of people is
placed and viewed through a magnifying glass with one eye, which in
itself already gives a stereoscopic effect. The illusion is usually en-
hanced by some of the objects in the foreground being cut out and
placed separately in front of the photograph proper. Our eye is very sen-
sitive to the solidity of objects close by; as far as distant/ objects are
concerned, the impression is much less perceptible.
ENLARGED PHOTOGRAPHS
One can even obtain photographs that won't seem flat even when
looked at with both eyes from quite a distance. You also know that our
brain blends two identical retinal images into one flat picture. How-
ever, the* greater the distance away from the object, the less our brain is
able to do that. Photographs taken with the aid of a lens having a focal
distance of 70 cm can be looked at with both eyes without losing the
sense of depth.
166
tres away. True, the picture will bo a bit blurred but this is barely
discernible at such a distance. Meanwhile, as far as the stereoscopic
effect and depth are concerned, you only stand to gain.
Cinema-goers have most likely noticed that some films seem to spring
into unusually clear relief to such an extent at times that one seems
to see real scenery and real actors. This depends not on the film, as is
often thought, but on where you take your seat. Though motion pictures
are taken with cameras having lenses with a very short focal length,
their projection on the screen is a hundred times larger and you can
see them with both eyes from quite a distance (10 crnX 100 = 10 ni).
The effect of relief is best when you look at the picture from the same
angle of vision as the movio camera "looked" when it was shooting the
film.
So, to find how far away you should seat yourself from the screen, you
should multiply the width of the screen, or rather the projection onto
the screen, by three. If the width is six of your steps, then the best seat
would be 18 steps away from the screen. Keep this in mind when try-
ing various devices offering a stereoscopic effect, because rmr> pay oa
ly ascribe to the invention what is really due to the <
tioned.
Many illustrations that seem blurred and flat when you look at them
in your habitual way acquire depth and clearness when viewed as' I
suggest. One will even catch the sparkle of water and other such purely
stereoscopic effects.
It's amazing that few people know these simple things though they
were all explained in popular-science books more than half a century
ago. In his Principles of Mental Physiology, with Their Application
to the Training and Discipline of the Mind, and the Study of Its Mor-
bid Conditions, William Carpenter has the following to say about how
one should look at photographs.
168
"It has long been known," Carpenter wrote in the same book, "that if
we gaze steadily at a picture, whose perspective projection, lights
and shadows, and general arrangement of details, are such as accurately
correspond with the reality which it represents, the impression it
produces will bo much more vivid when we look with one eye only,
than when we use both; and that the effect will be further heightened,
when we carefully shut out the surroundings of the picture, by looking
through a tube of appropriate size and shape. This fact has been com-
monly accounted for in a very erroneous manner. 'We see more ex-
quisitely/ says Lord Bacon, 'with one eye than with both, because the
vital spirits thus unite themselves the more and become the stronger';
and other writers, though in different language, agree with Bacon
in attributing the result to the concentration of the visual power, when
only one eye is used. But the fact is, that when we look with both eyes
at a picture within a moderate distance, we arc forced to recognise it
as a flat surface; whilst, when we look with only one, our minds are at
liberty to be acted on by the suggestions furnished by the perspective,
chiaroscuro, etc.; so that, after we have gazed for a little time, the
picture may begin to start into relief, and may even come to possess
the solidity of a model."
169
STEREOSCOPE
170
XL
Imagine now two drawings of one and the same object, one as seen
by the left eye, and the other, as seen by the right eye. If we look at
them so that each eye sees only its "own" drawing, we get instead of
two separate flat pictures one in relief. The impression of relief is great-
er even than the impression produced when] we look at a solid object
with one eye only.
There is a special device, called the stereoscope, to view these pairs.
Older types of stereoscopes used mirrors and the later models convex
glass prisms to superimpose the two images. In the prisms which
slightly enlarge the two images, because they are convex the light
coming from the pair is refracted in such a way that its imagined
continuation causes this superimposition.
171
BINOCULAR VISION
two black dots. Stare several seconds at the space between them,
meanwhile trying to look at an imagined object behind. Soon you
will be seeing double, seeing four dots instead of two. Then the two
extreme dots will swing far apart, while the two innermost dots will
close up and become one. Repeat with Figs. 124 and 725 to see some-
thing like the inside of a long pipe receding into the distance.
172
173
ture. Catch the proper distance at which they should bo held by trial
and error. See that the lighting is good this is important.
174
The stereoscopic pair at the bottom of Fig. 130 provides a still bigger
teaser. Though the vases and candlesticks seem identical there is a
great difference in size between them. The left-hand vase is nearly
twice as tall as the right-hand one, while the left-hand candlestick,
on the contrary, is much smaller than the clock and the right-hand
candlestick. Binocular vision immediately reveals the cause. The
objects are not in one row; they are placed at different distances, with
the bigger objects being further away than the smaller articles. A fine
illustration of the great advantage of binocular "two-eyed" vision
over "one-eyed" vision!
DETECTING FORGERY
176
cropanoy, oven in one toony-wcony lino, will strike the eye at onco
appearing either in front of, or behind, the banknote. (The idea, which
was first suggested by Dove in the mid-1 9th century, is not appli-
cablefor reasons of printing technique to all currency notes issued
today. Still his method will do to distinguish between two proofs
of a book-page, when one is printed from newly-composed type.)
AS GIANTS SEE IT
When an object is very far away, more than 450 metres distant, the
stereoscopic impression is no longer perceptible. After all the 6 cen-
timetres at which our eyes are set apart are nothing compared with
such a distance as 450 metres. No wonder buildings, mountains, and
landscapes that are far away seem flat. So do the celestial objects
all appear to be at the same distance, though, actually, the moon
is much closer than the planets, while the planets, in turn, arc very
much closer than the fixed stars. Naturally, a stereoscopic pair thus
photographed will not produce the illusion of relief in the stereoscope.
a ii
122668
objects 25 kilometres away still appear in discernible relief. For land sur-
veyors, seamen, gunners and travellers this instrument is a godsend, es-
pecially if equipped with a range-finder. The Zeiss prism binoculars
produces the same effect, as the distance between its lenses is greater than
the normal interocular distance (Fig. 132). The opera glass, on the con-
trary, has its lenses set not so far apart, to reduce the illusion of relief
so that the decor and settings present the intended impression.
178
UNIVERSE IN STEREOSCOPE
In the stereoscope we can detect the difference not only in the po-
sition of celestial objects but also in their brightness. This provides the
astronomer with a convenient method for tracking down the so-called
variable stars whose light periodically fluctuates. As soon as a star
12* 179
THREE-EYED VISION
Don't think this a slip of the tongue on my part; T really mean Ihroe
eyes. But how can one see with three eyes? And can oiie really acquire
a third eye?
Science cannot give you or mo a third eye, but it can give us the
magic power to see an object as it would appear to a three-eyed crea-
ture. Let me note first that a one eyed man can get from stereoscopic
photographs that impression of relief which he can't and doesn't get
in ordinary life. For this purpose we must project onto a screen in
rapid sequence the photographs intended for right and left eyes that
a normal person sees with both eyes simultaneously. The net result
is the same because a rapid sequence of visual images fuses into one
image just as two images seen simultaneously do. (It is quite likely that
the surprising "depth" of movie films at times, in addition to the
causes mentioned, is due also to this. When the movie camera sways
with an "even motion as often happens because of the film-winder
the still* will not be identical and, as they rapidly flit onto the screen
will appear to us as one 3-dimensional image.)
180
STEREOSCOPIC SPARKLE
even though the paper used for the pictures is dull. Such stereoscopic
drawings of models of crystals produce the impression of glittering
graphite. The sparkle of water, the glisten of leaves and other such
things are still more noticeable in stereoscopic photographs when this
is done. "
In an old but far from obsolete book, The Physiology of the Senses.
Vision, which the Russian physiologist Sechenov published in 1867,
we find a wonderful explanation of this phenomenon.
13-2668
181
Therefore you can have instances when with one eye you get many re-
flected rays, and with the other practically none these are precisely
the conditions that correspond to the stereoscopic fusion of a white
surface with a black one. Evidently there are bound to be instances
in looking at glistening polished surfaces when reflected light is
unevenly distributed between the eyes of the observer. Consequently,
the stereoscopic sparkle proves that experience is paramount in the
act during which images fuse bodily. The conflict between the fields of
vision immediately yields to a firm conception, as soon as the expe-
rience-trained apparatus of vision has the chance to attribute the
difference to some familiar instance of actual vision."
I noted a little earlier that different images of one and the same
object produce the illusion of relief when in rapid alternation they
perceptibly fuse. Does this happen only when we sec moving images
and stand still ourselves? Or will it also take place when the images
are standing still but we are moving? Yes, we get the same illusion, as
was only to be expected. Most likely many have noticed that movies
shot from an express train spring into unusually clear relief just as good
as in the stereoscope. If we pay heed to our visual perceptions whea
riding in a fast train or car we shall see this ourselves. Landscapes
thus observed spring into clear relief with the foreground distinctly
separate from the background. The "stereoscopic radius" of our eyes
increases appreciably to far beyond the 450-metre limit of binocular
vision for stationary eyes.
182
road fast driving again produces the same effect. We seem to sense tan-
gibly the dimensions of the hills and valleys.
One-eyed people will also see this and I'm sure it will afford a star-
tlingly novel sensation, as this is tantamount to the rapid sequence
of pictures producing the illusion of relief, a point mentioned before.
(This, incidentally, accounts for the noticeable stereoscopic effect pro-
duced by movie films shot from a train taking a bend, when the ob-
jects being photographed lie in the radius of this bend. This track "effect"
is well-known to cameramen.)
The effect produced by what are called colour anaglyphs the same as
produced by stereoscopic photographs is based precisely on this prop-
erty of tinted glass. The anaglyph is a picture in which the two stereosco-
pic images for the right and left eye respectively are superimposed] the
two images are coloured differently one in blue and the other in red.
13* 183
the right eye sees only the blue image the one intended for the right
eye and sees it, moreover, in black. Meanwhile the left eye sees
through the blue glass only the red image which is intended for the left
eye again in black. Each eye sees only one image, the one intended
for it. This repeats the stereoscope and, consequently, the result is the
same the illusion of depth.
"SHADOW MARVELS"
The "shadow marvels" that were once shown at the cinemas are
also based on the above-mentioned principle. Shadows cast by moving
figures on the screen appear to the viewer, who is equipped with differ-
ently-tinted glasses, as objects in three dimensions. The illusion is
achieved by bicoloured stereoscopy. The shadow-casting object is
placed between the screen and two adjacent sources of light, red and
green. This produces two partially superimposed coloured shadows
which are viewed through viewers matching in colour.
PC
^ \\
rm
/^
X *.-"
-"'"" \N
the green and red lamps (left); P and Q represent the objects placed
between the lamps and screen; pG, qG, pR and qR are the tinted shad-
ows that these objects cast on the screen; P l and Q l show where the
viewer looking through the differently-tinted glasses G is the green
glass, and R 9 the red one sees these objects. When the "spider" behind
the screen is shifted from Q to P the viewer thinks it to be creeping from
& to P t .
Generally speaking, every time the object behind the screen is moved
towards the source of light, thus causing the shadow cast on the screen
to grow larger, the viewer thinks the object to be moving from the screen
towards him.
Everything the viewer thinks is moving towards him from the screen
is actually moving on the other side of the screen in the oppo-
site directionfrom the screen to the source of light.
MAGIC METAMORPHOSES
The visitors first saw the "parlour" lit by ordinary white electric
light. When the ordinary light was turned off and a red light switched
on in its stead, the orange covers turned pink and the green tablecloth
a dark purple; meanwhile the cranberry juice lost its colour and looked
like water; the flowers in the vase changed in hue and seemed different;
and some inscriptions on the bookbindings vanished without trace.
Another flick of the switch and a green light went on. The "parlour"
was again transformed beyond recognition.
185
But why does the cranberry juice lose all colour when a red light is
directed at it? Because the decanter stands on a white runner laid across
the green baize. Once we remove the runner the cranberry juice turns
red. It loses its colour (in red lighting) only against the background
of the runner, which, though it turns red, we ourselves continue to regard
as white, both by force of habit and due to the contrast it presents to
the purple tablecloth. Since the juice has the same colour as the runner,
which we imagine to be white, we involuntarily think the juice to be
white too. That is why it appears no longer as red juice but a^colour-
less water. You may derive the same impressions by viewing the sur-
roundings through tinted glasses. (See my Do You Know Your Physics?
for more about this effect.)
HOW TALL IS THIS BOOK?
Ask a friend to show you how high the book he is holding would be
from the floor, if he stood it up on one edge. Then check his statement.
He is sure to guess wrongly: the book will actually be half as tall. Fuis
therm ore, better ask him not to bend down to show how high the book
would come up to, but provide the answer in so many words, with you
assisting. You can try this with any other familiar object a table
lamp, say, or a hat. However, it should be one you have grown ac-
customed to seeing at the level of your eyes. The reason why people err
is because every object diminishes in size when looked at edgeways.
186
room for three, no more! This illusion, owing to which dark patches seem
smaller than white patches of the same size, is known as "irradiation".
This comes from an imperfection of our eye, which, as an optical instru-
ment, does not quite measure up to strict optical requirements. Its
refrangible media do not cast on the retina that sharply-etched outline
which one gets on the ground-glass screen of a weli-focussed camera.
Owing to what is called spherical aberration, every light patch has
a light fringe which enlarges the retinal image. That is why light areas
always seem bigger than dark areas of equal size.
187
In his Theory of Colours the great poet Goethe who, though an observ-
ant student of nature, was not always a prudent enough physicist has
the following to say about this phenomenon:
188
fc^^fc
seem hexagonal
on a white background (Fig. 138) also seem hexagonal from far away,
though irradiation does not enlarge, but, on the contrary, reduces
the dots in size. One must note that the explanations afforded for optic-
al illusions in general are not completely satisfactory. As a matter
of fact, most illusions still have to be explained. (For more on the topic
see my Optical Illusions album.)
WHICH IS BLACKER?
Fig. 139. Look at this word with one eye. One letter
will seem hlacker than the rest
four letters are identical in blackness; they are merely shaded in differ-
ent directions. If our eyes were just as perfect and faultless as expen-
sive glass lenses, this would have no effect on the blackness of the
letters; but since our eyes do not refract light identically in differ-
ent directions, we cannot see vertical, horizontal, and slanting lines
just as distinctly.
STARING PORTRAIT
You have most likely seen at one time or another portraits that not
only look you square in the eye, but even follow you with their eyes
wherever you go. This was noticed long ago and has always baffled
many, giving some the jitters. The great Russian writer Nikolai Gogol
provides a wonderful description of this in his "Portrait":
"The eyes dug right into him and seemed wanting to watch only him
and nothing else. The portrait stared right past everything else, straight
at him and into him."
190
On the portrait, however, the pupil stays
right in the centre of the eye which-
ever way we step. And since we continue
to see the face in the same position in
relation to us, we, naturally, think that
the man in the portrait has turned his
head our way and is watching us. This
explains the odd sensation we derive
from other such pictures the horse
seems to be charging straight at us how-
ever hard we try to dodge it; the man's
finger keeps pointing straight at us, and
so on and so forth. Fig. 140 is one such
picture. They are often used to advertise
or for propaganda purposes.
out of the ordinary in the set of pins in Fig. 141, does there? However,
lift the book to eye level and, cupping one eye, look at the pins so
that your line of vision slides along them, as it were. Your eye must be
at the point where the imagined continuations of these pins cross. Then
the pins will seem to be stuck in the paper upright. When you shift
your head sideways, the pins] seem to sway in the same direction.
191
Fig. 141. Fix one eye (have
the other shut) at the point
where the imagined continua-
tions of the pins would con-
verge. The pins will seem to
be stuck in the paper upright.
By gently shifting the hook
from side to side, you get
the impression that the pins
are swaying
known. The illusions provided by Figs. 142 and 143, with lines on
a checkered background, are particularly effective. One simply can't
believe that the letters in Fig. 142 are straight and it is still harder
to believe that the circles in Fig. 143 are not one spiral. The only
way to check it is L to apply a pencil and trace the circles. Only a pair
of compasses will tell us that the straight line AC in Fig. 144 is just
as long as AB and not shorter, as it appears to be. The other illusions
in Figs. 145, 146, 147, and 148 are explained in the captions. The
following curious incident shows how effective the illusion Fig. 147
provides is. When the publisher of a previous edition of this book
was examining the clich6, he thought it badly done and was about to
return it to the printshop to have the grey splotches at the intersec-
tion of the white lines scraped off, when I chanced to intervene and
explained the matter.
192
Fig. 142. The letters are upright
Fig. 143. This seems a spiral; actually the curves are circles,
which you can see for yourself by following the lines with a
pointed pencil
.c
SHORT-SIGHTED VISION
With his spectacles off, a short-sighted person sees badly. {But what
he sees and how he^sees it is something of which people with normal
eyesight have a very hazy notion. Since many are short-sighted, it would
not be without interest to learn how they see.
Would you like to know what the near-sighted sees at night? All
bright objects street lanterns, lamps, lighted windows, etc. assume
enormous proportions and transform the world around into a chaotic
jumble of shapeless bright splotches and dark and misty silhouettes.
Instead of a row of street lamps the short-sighted sees two or three
huge bright patches, which blot out the rest of the street. He cannot
make out an approaching motor car; instead he sees just the two bright
halos of its front lights and a dark mass behind. Even the sky seems
different. The short-sighted sees stars of only the first three or four
stellar magnitudes. Consequently, instead of several thousand stars
195
he sees only a few hundred, which seem to be as large as lamps. The
moon seems tremendous and very close, while a crescent moon takes
on a phantastic form.
The fault lies in the structure of the eye; the eye-ball is too deep,
so much so that its changed refractive power causes images from distant
objects to be focussed before they reach the retina. The blurred retinal
image is produced by diverging beams of light.
CHAPTER TEN
"His first purchase was an echo in Georgia that repeated four times;
his next was a six-repeater in Maryland; his next was a thirteen-re-
peater in Maine; his next was a nine-repeater in Kansas; his next was
a twelve-repeater in Tennessee, which he got cheap, so to speak, because
it was out of repair, a portion of the crag which reflected it having
tumbled down. He believed he could repair it at a cost of a few thou-
sand dollars, and, by increasing the elevation with masonry, treble
the repeating capacity; but the architect who undertook the job had
never built an echo before, and so he utterly spoiled this one. Before
he meddled with it, it used to talk back like a mother-in-law, but now
it was only fit for the deaf and dumb asylum."
142668 197
is this so? Because an echo is nothing but a train of sound waves re-
flected back by some obstacle. Sound abides by the same laws as light:
its angle of incidence is equal to its angle of reflection.
Imagine yourself at the foot of a hill (Fig. M9), with the sound*
reflecting barrier AB higher than you are. Naturally the sound waves
propagating along the lines Ca> Cb and Cc will not reflect back to your
ear but into the air along the directions aa, bb and cc. On the other
hand, when the sound-reflecting barrier is at (he same level with
you or even a bit lower, as in Fig. 150, you will hear an echo. The sound
travel? down along Ca and Cb and returns along the broken lines CaaC
or Cbl)C t bouncing off the ground once or twice. The pocket between
the points acts like a concave mirror and makes the echo still more
distinct. Were the ground between the two points C and B a bulge the
echo would be very faint and might not reach you at all, because it
would diffuse sound just as a "convex mirror diffuses light.
You must develop a certain knack to detect an echo on uneven ter-
198
rain, and even then you must also know how to produce it. In the first
place, don't stand too close to the obstacle. The sound waves must
travel a long enough distance because otherwise the echo will occur
too early and merge with the sound it self. Since sound propagates
with the speed of 310 m/sec, at a distance of 5 metres away the echo
should be heard exactly half a second later. Though every sound has
its echo, not every echo is as distinct, depending on whether it is
a beast roaring in a forest, a bugle blowing, thunder reverberating,
or a girl singing. The more abrupt and louder the sound, the more
distinct is the echo. A hand-clap is best. The human voice is less suit-
able, especially a man's voice. The high-pitched voices of women
and children furnish a more distinct echo.
SOUND AS RULER
Sometimes one can use one's knowledge of the velocity with which
sound travels in air to measure the distance to an inaccessible object.
Jules Verne provides a case in point in his Journey to the Centre of
Earth, where in the course of their subterranean exploration the two
travellers, the professor and his nephew, lost each other. They hal-
looed, and when they finally heard each other the following conversa-
tion took place between them.
M*
19$
14 'Certainly. 1 '
"'Well, take it into your hand. Pronounce iny name, noting exactly
the second at which you speak. I will reply as soon as I hear your
words and you will then note exactly the moment- at which my reply
reaches you.'
"'Very good; and the mean time between my question and your
answer will ho the time occupied by my voice in reaching you....'
"'Yes.'
"I applied my ear close to the sides of the cavernous gallery, and as
soon as the word 'Harry' reached my ear, 1 turned round and, placing
my lips to the wall, repeated the sound.
"'Forty seconds,' said my uncle. 'There has elapsed forty seconds
between the two words. The sound, therefore, takes twenty seconds
to travel. Now, allowing a thousand and twenty feet for every second,
we have twenty thousand four hundred feeta league and a half and
one-eighth.'"
Now you should be able to answer this question: How far away is
the train engine if I hear its toot one and a half seconds after I see the
wisp of smoke rise from the whistle?
SOUND MIRRORS
You can also have a concave sound mirror that would focus the
wave-trains of sound. With two soup dishes and a watch you can stage
the following illuminating experiment. Put one dish on the table and
hold the watch a few centimetres above its bottom. Hold the other
dish near your ear as shown in Fig. 151. If you gauge the position of
200
pipes carry sounds from the courtyard to the marble busts placed near
the walls in one of tho galleries, etc. The illusion of whispering or sing-
ing busts is thus produced.
SOUND IN THEATRE
The theatre- and concert-goer knows very well that there are halls
with good acoustics and bad acoustics. In some speech and music carry
distinctly tt) quite a distance; in others they are muted even quite
near.
Not so long ago the good acoustics of one or another theatre was
considered simply a stroke of good luck. Now builders have found
ways and means of successfully suppressing objectionable reverbera-
tion. Though I shall not expand on this point as it can interest only
the architect, let me note that the main way of avoiding acoustical
defects is to create surfaces to absorb superfluous sounds.
When too much sound is absorbed, this is also bad, as, firstly, it
mutes speech and music, and, secondly, suppresses reverberation so
much that the sounds seem ragged and brittle. As we see, some meas-
ureneither too long, nor too shortof reverberation is desirable.
This measure cannot be the same for all halls and must be quantita-
tively estimated by the designing architect.
SEA-BOTTOM ECHO
Echoes wfcre useless until a method was devised to sound sea and
ocean depths with their help. We stumbled upon this invention by
accident. When in 1912 the huge ocean liner Titanic ran afoul of
202
an iceberg and went down with nearly all its passengers, navigators
thought of employing the echo during fogs or at night to detect ob-
stacles in a ship's way. Though this failed to achieve its original pur-
pose, it suggested a fine method, whereby sea depths could be sounded
by the echo from the sea-bottom.
Fig.
153. Echo
sounding
depth-
203
Indeed, why? After all most insects have no special organ for the
purpose. The buzzing, which is heard only while the insect is flying,
is produced by the flapping of the insect's wings, which vibrate with
a rapidity of several hundred times a second. The wings act the role
of a vibrating plate, and any plate vibrating with sufficiently great
rapidity more than 16 times a second produces a tone of a definite
pitch.
204
AUDITORY ILLUSIONS
We very often err in determining not how far away the sound is,
but the direction from which it comes. We can distinguish pretty well
by ear whether the shot was fired to the right or left of us (Fig. 154),
but we are often unable to determine whether it was fired in front of
us or behind us (Fig. 155). We often hear a shot fired in front of us as
one coming from behind. All we can say in such cases is whether it
is near or far depending on how loud the shot is.
205
754. Where was the shot fired? On the right or on the left?
Fig. US.
W here was
In front?
Or behind?
Your mistake is that you turn your head so that the grasshopper
occupies its symmetrical plane. As you already know, this readily
206
The deaf Beethoven, the story goes, could hear a piano being played
by placing one end of his walking stick on il and gripping the other end
between his tooth. In the same way deaf people can dance to music,
provided there is nothing wrong with their internal ear. The music
reaches the auditory nerve via the floor and the bones of the head.
99 QUESTIONS
6. Why are the upper spokes of a rolling wheel blurred and the
lower spokes seen distinctly?
14. Would you like to have presents tossed at you when you're driv-
ing a car?
15. Does a body weigh more or less when falling than when at rest?
18- Can you weigh things right on faulty scales with correct weights,
or on a properly calibrated balance, but with wrong weights?
208
34. What shape does liquid take when it weighs nothing? Can you
prove this experimentally?
40. Why does a soap bubble rise? And where does it rise fasterin
a cold or warm room?
41. What is thinner? The human hair or the film of a soap bubble?
How many times is one thinner than the other?
42. Water gathers under a glass when it's placed, with a burning
piece of paper in it, bottom up on a tray of water. Why does this happen?
46. If you lost your weight, but your clothes didn't, would you fly
up into the air?
48. What happens to tram rails on a very hot day or on a very cold
one? And why is the weather not so dangerous for railway tracks?
209
50. What sort of tumblers crack more often because of hot or cold
water?
51. Why do lemonade glasses have a thick bottom and why are
they no good as tea glasses?
62. Why can you boil water in a welded vessel, without fearing that
it might come to pieces?
63. Why does a sled cross snow with difficulty in a heavy frost?
67. When would we see the Sun rise if light propagated instanta-
neously?
71. Where should you place a lamp to see yourself better in a mirror?
210
82. How can we see things like the giants in fairy tales?
85. Why does the landscape acquire deeper relief when viewed from
a passing train?
87. What is the effect of the so-called "shadow marvel" based on?
92. When you hear the echo 1.5 seconds after you clap your hands,
how far away is the sound barrier?
There is a second part to this book. However, both can be read inde-
pendently of each other.
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