16mm Filmography
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Light: Waves or Bullets

Watch a searchlight as it pierces heavy night clouds. Notice that you don’t see the beam of light, merely where it comes from: the face of the searchlight, reflections from the clouds or duct blocking the beam. In other words, the light beam itself is invisible. Beginning with a similar demonstration, Edwin C. Kemble shows the difficulty science has had in providing a wholly satisfactory theory of light. He uses a stroboscopically lighted tank to illustrate wave theory and high-voltage discharges to suggest the violence necessary to generate radiant energy with short wavelengths. The violent damage done by X-rays, gamma rays and ultra violet radiation leads Kemble to the corpuscular explanation of light. By an examination of cloud-chamber photographs, visibly recording action in the unseen world of atomic particles, Kemble reconciles the two theories. The yield of this revolutionary work is dramatic: no less than the discovery of a universal property of all forms of existence.

More in In OF SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS

  1. ARE SCIENTISTS DOGMATIC?
  2. DISTANCE TO THE SUN
  3. EARTH HISTORY
  4. LARGE AND THE SMALL
  5. LARGE EFFECTS OF SMALL CAUSES
  6. NATURE VS THE LABORATORY
  7. OF SCIENCE AND SCIENTISTS—INTRODUCTION
  8. PURE SCIENCE AND APPLIED SCIENCE
  9. RESEARCH IN DEPTH
  10. SCIENCE AND COMMON SENSE
  11. SCIENCE AND NON-SCIENCE
  12. SCIENCE AND QUANTITY
  13. SCIENCE AND WHOLE NUMBERS
  14. The Birth of a New Physics
  15. UNITY OF SCIENCE
  16. AGE OF THE UNIVERSE 1957
  17. Are Atoms Real? 1958
  18. Building Up a New Theory 1958
  19. Light: Waves or Bullets 1958
  20. Why Science Works 1958

Related films

Sources

  1. 16mm Filmography (legacy record) — title, year, creator, format, genre, description, catalog record
  2. Educational film guide. Supplements (1959-62) — title, catalog record

Original permalink · Record added 2025-04-20 17:34:28