LIGHTNING

In a thunderstorm we have the most spectacular display in lightning of a violent and explosive rush of electrons (electricity) from one body to another, from cloud to cloud, or to the earth. In this wonderful photograph of an electrical storm note the long branched and undulating flashes of lightning. Each flash lasts no longer than the one hundred-thousandth part of a second of time.

The Fate of the World

Professor Soddy has given an interesting picture of what might happen when the sun’s light and heat is no longer what it is. The human eye “has adapted itself through the ages to the peculiarities of the sun’s light, so as to make the most of that wave-length of which there is most…. Let us indulge for a moment in these gloomy prognostications, as to the consequences to this earth of the cooling of the sun with the lapse of ages, which used to be in vogue, but which radio-activity has so rudely shaken. Picture the fate of the world when the sun has become a dull red-hot ball, or even when it has cooled so far that it would no longer emit light to us. That does not all mean that the world would be in inky darkness, and that the sun would not emit light to the people then inhabiting this world, if any had survived and could keep themselves from freezing. To such, if the eye continued to adapt itself to the changing conditions, our blues and violets would be ultra-violet and invisible, but our dark heat would be light and hot bodies would be luminous to them which would be dark to us.”

What the Blue “Sky” means

We saw in a previous chapter how the spectroscope splits up light-waves into their colours. But nature is constantly splitting the light into its different-lengthed waves, its colours. The rainbow, where dense moisture in the air acts as a spectroscope, is the most familiar example. A piece of mother-of-pearl, or even a film of oil on the street or on water, has the same effect, owing to the fine inequalities in its surface. The atmosphere all day long is sorting out the waves. The blue “sky” overhead means that the fine particles in the upper atmosphere catch the shorter waves, the blue waves, and scatter them. We can make a tubeful of blue sky in the laboratory at any time. The beautiful pink-flush on the Alps at sunrise, the red glory that lingers in the west at sunset, mean that, as the sun’s rays must struggle through denser masses of air when it is low on the horizon, the long red waves are sifted out from the other shafts.

Then there is the varied face of nature which, by absorbing some waves and reflecting others, weaves its own beautiful robe of colour. Here and there is a black patch, which absorbs all the light. White surfaces reflect the whole of it. What is reflected depends on the period of vibration of the electrons in the particular kind of matter. Generally, as the electrons receive the flood of trillions of waves, they absorb either the long or the medium or the short, and they give us the wonderful colour-scheme of nature. In some cases the electrons continue to radiate long after the sunlight has ceased to fall upon them. We get from them “black” or invisible light, and we can take photographs by it. Other bodies, like glass, vibrate in unison with the period of the light-waves and let them stream through.

Light without Heat

There are substances—”phosphorescent” things we call them—which give out a mysterious cold light of their own. It is one of the problems of science, and one of profound practical interest. If we could produce light without heat our “gas bill” would shrink amazingly. So much energy is wasted in the production of heat-waves and ultra-violet waves which we do not want, that 90 per cent. or more of the power used in illumination is wasted. Would that the glow-worm, or even the dead herring, would yield us its secret! Phosphorus is the one thing we know as yet that suits the purpose, and—it smells! Indeed, our artificial light is not only extravagant in cost, but often poor in colour. The unwary person often buys a garment by artificial light, and is disgusted next morning to find in it a colour which is not wanted. The colour disclosed by the sun was not in the waves of the artificial light.

Beyond the waves of violet light are the still shorter and more rapid waves—the “ultra-violet” waves—which are precious to the photographer. As every amateur knows, his plate may safely be exposed to light that comes through a red or an orange screen. Such a screen means “no thoroughfare” for the blue and “beyond-blue” waves, and it is these which arrange the little grains of silver on the plate. It is the same waves which supply the energy to the little green grains of matter (chlorophyll) in the plant, preparing our food and timber for us, as will be seen later. The tree struggles upward and spreads out its leaves fanwise to the blue sky to receive them. In our coal-measures, the mighty dead forests of long ago, are vast stores of sunlight which we are prodigally using up.

The X-rays are the extreme end, the highest octave, of the series of waves. Their power of penetration implies that they are excessively minute, but even these have not held their secret from the modern physicist. From a series of beautiful experiments, in which they were made to pass amongst the atoms of a crystal, we learned their length. It is about the ten-millionth of a millimetre, and a millimetre is about the 1/25 of an inch!

One of the most recent discoveries, made during a recent eclipse of the sun, is that light is subject to gravitation. A ray of light from a star is bent out of its straight path when it passes near the mass of the sun. Professor Eddington tells us that we have as much right to speak of a pound of light as of a pound of sugar. Professor Eddington even calculates that the earth receives 160 tons of light from the sun every year!

ENERGY: HOW ALL LIFE DEPENDS ON IT

As we have seen in an earlier chapter, one of the fundamental entities of the universe is matter. A second, not less important, is called energy. Energy is indispensable if the world is to continue to exist, since all phenomena, including life, depend on it. Just as it is humanly impossible to create or to destroy a particle of matter, so is it impossible to create or to destroy energy. This statement will be more readily understood when we have considered what energy is.

Energy, like matter, is indestructible, and just as matter exists in various forms so does energy. And we may add, just as we are ignorant of what the negative and positive particles of electricity which constitute matter really are, so we are ignorant of the true nature of energy. At the same time, energy is not so completely mysterious as it once was. It is another of nature’s mysteries which the advance of modern science has in some measure unveiled. It was only during the nineteenth century that energy came to be known as something as distinct and permanent as matter itself.

Forms of Energy

The existence of various forms of energy had been known, of course, for ages; there was the energy of a falling stone, the energy produced by burning wood or coal or any other substance, but the essential identity of all these forms of energy had not been suspected. The conception of energy as something which, like matter, was constant in amount, which could not be created nor destroyed, was one of the great scientific acquisitions of the past century.

It is not possible to enter deeply into this subject here. It is sufficient if we briefly outline its salient aspects. Energy is recognised in two forms, kinetic and potential. The form of energy which is most apparent to us is the energy of motion; for example, a rolling stone, running water, a falling body, and so on. We call the energy of motion kinetic energy. Potential energy is the energy a body has in virtue of its position—it is its capacity, in other words, to acquire kinetic energy, as in the case of a stone resting on the edge of a cliff.

Energy may assume different forms; one kind of energy may be converted directly or indirectly into some other form. The energy of burning coal, for example, is converted into heat, and from heat energy we have mechanical energy, such as that manifested by the steam-engine. In this way we can transfer energy from one body to another. There is the energy of the great waterfalls of Niagara, for instance, which are used to supply the energy of huge electric power stations.

What Heat is

An important fact about energy is, that all energy tends to take the form of heat energy. The impact of a falling stone generates heat; a waterfall is hotter at the bottom than at the top—the falling particles of water, on striking the ground, generate heat; and most chemical changes are attended by heat changes. Energy may remain latent indefinitely in a lump of wood, but in combustion it is liberated, and we have heat as a result. The atom of radium or of any other radio-active substance, as it disintegrates, generates heat. “Every hour radium generates sufficient heat to raise the temperature of its own weight of water, from the freezing point to the boiling point.” And what is heat? Heat is molecular motion. The molecules of every substance, as we have seen on a previous page, are in a state of continual motion, and the more vigorous the motion the hotter the body. As wood or coal burns, the invisible molecules of these substances are violently agitated, and give rise to ether waves which our senses interpret as light and heat. In this constant movement of the molecules, then, we have a manifestation of the energy of motion and of heat.

That energy which disappears in one form reappears in another has been found to be universally true. It was Joule who, by churning water, first showed that a measurable quantity of mechanical energy could be transformed into a measurable quantity of heat energy. By causing an apparatus to stir water vigorously, that apparatus being driven by falling weights or a rotating flywheel or by any other mechanical means, the water became heated. A certain amount of mechanical energy had been used up and a certain amount of heat had appeared. The relation between these two things was found to be invariable. Every physical change in nature involves a transformation of energy, but the total quantity of energy in the universe remains unaltered. This is the great doctrine of the Conservation of Energy.

Substitutes for Coal

Consider the source of nearly all the energy which is used in modern civilisation—coal. The great forests of the Carboniferous epoch now exists as beds of coal. By the burning of coal—a chemical transformation—the heat energy is produced on which at present our whole civilisation depends. Whence is the energy locked up in the coal derived? From the sun. For millions of years the energy of the sun’s rays had gone to form the vast vegetation of the Carboniferous era and had been transformed, by various subtle processes, into the potential energy that slumbers in those immense fossilized forests.

The exhaustion of our coal deposits would mean, so far as our knowledge extends at present, the end of the world’s civilisation. There are other known sources of energy, it is true. There is the energy of falling water; the great falls of Niagara are used to supply the energy of huge electric power stations. Perhaps, also, something could be done to utilise the energy of the tides—another instance of the energy of moving water. And attempts have been made to utilise directly the energy of the sun’s rays. But all these sources of energy are small compared with the energy of coal. A suggestion was made at a recent British Association meeting that deep borings might be sunk in order to utilise the internal heat of the earth, but this is not, perhaps, a very practical proposal. By far the most effective substitutes for coal would be found in the interior energy of the atom, a source of energy which, as we have seen, is practically illimitable. If the immense electrical energy in the interior of the atom can ever be liberated and controlled, then our steadily decreasing coal supply will no longer be the bugbear it now is to all thoughtful men.

The stored-up energy of the great coal-fields can be used up, but we cannot replace it or create fresh supplies. As we have seen, energy cannot be destroyed, but it can become unavailable. Let us consider what this important fact means.

Dissipation of Energy

Energy may become dissipated. Where does it go? since if it is indestructible it must still exist. It is easier to ask the question than to give a final answer, and it is not possible in this Outline, where an advanced knowledge of physics is not assumed on the part of the reader, to go fully into the somewhat difficult theories put forward by physicists and chemists. We may raise the temperature, say, of iron, until it is white-hot. If we stop the process the temperature of the iron will gradually settle down to the temperature of surrounding bodies. As it does so, where does its previous energy go? In some measure it may pass to other bodies in contact with the piece of iron, but ultimately the heat becomes radiated away in space where we cannot follow it. It has been added to the vast reservoir of unavailable heat energy of uniform temperature. It is sufficient here to say that if all bodies had a uniform temperature we should experience no such thing as heat, because heat only travels from one body to another, having the effect of cooling the one and warming the other. In time the two bodies acquire the same temperature. The sum-total of the heat in any body is measured in terms of the kinetic energy of its moving molecules.

There must come a time, so far as we can see at present, when, even if all the heat energy of the universe is not radiated away into empty infinite space, yet a uniform temperature will prevail. If one body is hotter than another it radiates heat to that body until both are at the same temperature. Each body may still possess a considerable quantity of heat energy, which it has absorbed, but that energy, so far as reactions between those two bodies are concerned, is now unavailable. The same principle applies whatever number of bodies we consider. Before heat energy can be utilised we must have bodies with different temperature. If the whole universe were at some uniform temperature, then, although it might possess an enormous amount of heat energy, this energy would be unavailable.

What a Uniform Temperature would mean

And what does this imply? It implies a great deal: for if all the energy in the world became unavailable, the universe, as it now is, would cease to be. It is possible that, by the constant interchange of heat radiations, the whole universe is tending to some uniform temperature, in which case, although all molecular motion would not have ceased, it would have become unavailable. In this sense it may be said that the universe is running down.

If all the molecules of a substance were brought to a standstill, that substance would be at the absolute zero of temperature. There could be nothing colder. The temperature at which all molecular motions would cease is known: it is -273° C. No body could possibly attain a lower temperature than this: a lower temperature could not exist. Unless there exists in nature some process, of which we know nothing at present, whereby energy is renewed, our solar system must one day sink to this absolute zero of temperature. The sun, the earth, and every other body in the universe is steadily radiating heat, and this radiation cannot go on for ever, because heat continually tends to diffuse and to equalise temperatures.

But we can see, theoretically, that there is a way of evading this law. If the chaotic molecular motions which constitute heat could be regulated, then the heat energy of a body could be utilised directly. Some authorities think that some of the processes which go on in the living body do not involve any waste energy, that the chemical energy of food is transformed directly into work without any of it being dissipated as useless heat energy. It may be, therefore, that man will finally discover some way of escape from the natural law that, while energy cannot be destroyed, it has a tendency to become unavailable.

The primary reservoir of energy is the atom; it is the energy of the atom, the atom of elements in the sun, the stars, the earth, from which nature draws for all her supply of energy. Shall we ever discover how we can replenish the dwindling resources of energy, or find out how we can call into being the at present unavailable energy which is stored up in uniform temperature?

It is certain that energy is an actual entity just as much as matter, and that it cannot be created or destroyed. Matter and ether are receptacles or vehicles of energy. As we have said, what these entities really are in themselves we do not know. It may be that all forms of energy are in some fundamental way aspects of the same primary entity which constitutes matter: how all matter is constituted of particles of electricity we have already seen. The question to which we await an answer is: What is electricity?

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