Sky in a Bottle.SKY IN A BOTTLE PETER PESIC PESIC Physical Education Special Interest Council (Newfoundland/Labrador, Canada) Why is the sky blue? Children and philosophers alike have pondered this question throughout history. The sky's signature color has been attributed to factors ranging from suspended dust particles to reflections of light from Earth's oceans. Aristotle posited that the sky's blue comes from a mixture of the dark night sky and white air. Physicist-author Pesic reviews the multitude of theories developed by other great thinkers, from Leonardo da Vinci Leonardo da Vinci (də vĭn`chē, Ital. lāōnär`dō dä vēn`chē), 1452–1519, Italian painter, sculptor, architect, musician, engineer, and scientist, b. near Vinci, a hill village in Tuscany. to Johannes Kepler to Rene Descartes to Isaac Newton. Their ideas were based on their somewhat differing understandings of light, wavelengths, reflection, and refraction refraction, in physics, deflection of a wave on passing obliquely from one transparent medium into a second medium in which its speed is different, as the passage of a light ray from air into glass. . The book chronicles the work of physicist John William Strutt
William Strutt (3 July 1825 – 3 January 1915) was an English artist. Strutt was born in Teignmouth, Devon, England, and came from a family of artists, his grandfather, Joseph Strutt, was a , also known as the third Baron Rayleigh, who in the late 19th century developed a working explanation for the sky's blue. Pesic provides an elegant synopsis of the scientific investigation into the sky's color as well as an appendix of experiments for readers seeking to explain some of the sky's mystery for themselves. MIT MIT - Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 2005, 256 p., b&w illus., hardcover, $24.95. |
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