The Laws of Radiation and Absorption

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Excerpt from The Laws of Radiation and Absorption: Memoirs by Prévost, Stewart, Kirchhoff, and Kirchhoff and Bunsen The attempt of Prévost to explain the experiments of Pictet, of the apparent concentration of cold at the focus of a mirror, without attributing the quality of radiation to cold, as assumed by Pictet, lead him to the enunciation of the very important principle which he called the movable equilibrium of heat, now designated as the theory of exchanges. Prevost, who was a disciple of le Sage, and who had issued, with many additions, his memoirs, assumed, in addition to a corpuscular fluid caloric, a free corpuscular radiant caloric, the equal interchange of which between neighboring free spaces, constituted heat equilibrium. Any interference with this equilibrium will be reestablished by the inequalities of the exchanges. On this principle he was able to explain the apparent concentration of cold and also to show the inadmissibility of cold as an agent susceptible of radiation. He was careful, however, to fortify his principle by showing that the same results would follow on the then distrusted hypothesis of undulatory exchanges, which has been adopted by his successors. Later experimenters, particularly Leslie and De la Provastaye and Desains, confirmed the theory and also showed in many instances quantitative relations between radiation and absorption. But the most important advance was made by Balfour Stewart in establishing, not only a quantitative relation, but also a qualitative or selective one. By the introduction of his ingenious idea of an impervious radiating inclosure he demonstrated the equality between the emissive and the absorptive power of any wave length. We owe to Kirchhoff, however, the first rigorous proof of the celebrated law (usually designated on the Continent as Kirchhoff's law) of the emission and absorption of light and heat, and the application of the same by both Kirchhoff and Bunsen to Spectrum Analysis. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.