Phoenix Journal 208 - Four Winds 10

“white hot”, which is a combination of all the colors.
THE BLACKBOX
RADIATION EXPERIMENT
An experiment was performed with a black iron box called the Blackbox Radiation experiment. A vacuum
was created on the inside, and the box heated until light was produced inside the box. Since light is a wave,
it would be reasonable to expect that as the heat increased, the frequency would increase and the color
would increase. However, when the experiment was performed, the evidence did not fit the expectation!
THE RAYLEIGH-JEANS THEORY
AND OTHER PROBLEMS
Lord John Rayleigh (1842-1919, discoverer of argon) developed a formula for blackbody radiation, using
Maxwell’s and Newton’s classical equations. When he presented it to the public, Sir James Jeans pointed
out that he had made a mistake, and the corrected formula was called the Rayleigh-Jeans Theory formula.
When the formula was tested by experiment, it was found that the results of the experiments did not fit the
formula. The results fit closely at lower frequencies, then diverged greatly at higher frequencies.
Another experiment called the Photoelectric Effect also caused a problem. In this experiment, a battery
was connected to a vacuum tube which had a sodium plate separated from another plate in the vacuum.
When the tube was in darkness, no electricity would flow. Electricity would flow when a light was shone
on the sodium plate. A brighter light would make more electricity flow, and the frequency should not have
any effect on whether electricity flows, but the observed facts showed that high frequency would make
electricity flow, but low frequency would not. Once again, their classical explanations did not fit. Scientists
thought light had to be either a wave or a particle because they could not imagine anything else it could be,
yet their “laws” did not completely reconcile the results of the experiments with either viewpoint.
If you have ever used a vacuum bottle such as a Thermos to keep something hot or cold, you are probably
aware that it works because heat does not travel through a vacuum. Yet the heat from the Sun travels those
millions of miles through the vacuum of space and heats the Earth, according to the common perception.
Even with a common light bulb, somehow the heat from the filament travels across the vacuum in the
bulb and makes the bulb hot. The scientists tried to explain this by saying that somehow the heat was
carried by the light. And if light is a wave vibration, what is vibrating? Supposedly there is empty space
between Earth and the Sun. To solve this problem, the material ether was conceived. Light and heat from
the Sun would vibrate the ether and create waves which traveled to the Earth. This ether would have
to exist throughout all the universe, and the Earth would pass through it without friction. Since light is
vibrations of the ether, and light travels through glass, this ether must also exist inside glass. The theory
answered some problems but created others.
Sound travels through air at about 1100 feet per second. Imagine three men on a long, flat railway car, one
at each end and one in the middle. Imagine the car is travelling down the track at 60 feet per second (about
40 miles per hour) and the man in the middle fires a gun. The sound will travel to the man at the front of the
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