Newtons prisum

[a10ken]

After watchimg last night,s "diagrams" i wonderd that if newton bought his prisum from a country fair then the maker of said item must have had prior knowlage of it,s optical propertys and that newton could only expand on this other persons work because of his familys money/social position. so the real credit must go to a mystery glass maker. any other oppinions:confused:

[Merlin66]

Many people all over the world were using prisms prior to Newton.

The real issue is that the coloured "rainbow" was never questioned and analysed. It was assumed to come from the glass not the light itself. Up until Newton's investigations there was only one colour of light "white"

He had great difficulty with his peers (and the church) gaining acceptance of the fact that visible light is a mix of all colours.

[a10ken]

So were prisums just a novelty item or a scientific tool??

[a10ken]

Sorry.... prisms!

[Merlin66]

At the time of Newton - just another toy like spinning tops and hoops. Not to my knowledge used for any scientific work; that came later in the late 1700's early 1800's

[a10ken]

Thanks for the enlightenment M66

[acey]

Newton's "crucial experiment" was not to split white light into a spectrum - that phenomenon was known since ancient times. What he did was use a second prism to show that the individual colours remained unaltered on subsequent refraction and would recombine to form white. So in the story of the country fair the really important bit is that he presumably decided to buy two prisms, not one.

[Merlin66]

Seems strange to us in the 21st Century, that the phenomenon of refraction through a raindrop to form the rainbow had be geometrically calculated and demonstrated back in AD 1000 but still they did not grasp that light was made up of various colours....the "medium" ie raindrop was the reason for the rainbow - not just the light.

[ollypenrice]

People had been dropping things long before Newton (with a little help from Hooke) produced a theory of gravity...

It is the explanation that matters.

Olly

[yeti monster]

It is the explanation that matters.

Olly

Indeed Olly, I have to perform pressure tests on various systems and on the production wells here on the rig. To most the test is simply either 'pass or fail'. To me, a failed test can tell me a great deal of things. I will make observations of what the pressure is doing, how it is behaving and from my observations try to determine the nature of the failure, which could be a component of the well 10,000ft below the seabed. From this I can then advise the 'grown-ups' what the possible problems may be and from there we can then attempt to rectify them.