Abstract
This chapter contains an essay of Elsa Garmire about Nichols (1869–1924) and Hull’s (1870–1956) results on measurements of light pressure in 1901 and later and their comparison with Lebedev’s results (Sect. 13.1). It also contains a reprint of the paper of Nichols and Hull of 1901 in which their first results were reported (Sect. 13.2).
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Notes
- 1.
Bartoli was an Italian who provided a proof of this equation for all waves by means of thermodynamics at roughly the same time as Maxwell proved it by electromagnetic theory.
- 2.
Today’s spelling will be used for his name, although at the turn of the century his name was transliterated as Piotr Lebedew.
- 3.
The Radiometer consisted of four vanes, each of which was blackened on one side and silvered on the other, and attached to the arms of a rotor balanced on a vertical support designed to turn with very little friction. The mechanism was placed inside a clear glass bulb and pumped out to a high, but not perfect, vacuum. Theory shows that in vacuum, radiation pressure would be twice as high on the reflecting side, so the high reflectivity side would be pushed away. In the radiometer, however, residual gas will heat up due to absorption on the black side and push the vanes away.
- 4.
Garmire’s translation from the German.
- 5.
The light illuminated a platinum disc allowing it to heat. When the light was turned off, electrical current was passed through the platinum disc until it heated to the same temperature. Knowing the resistance of the disk and the amount of current, the ergs of absorbed illumination could be determined.
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Garmire, E. (2019). First Experiments on Measuring Light Pressure II (Ernest Fox Nichols and Gordon Ferrie Hull). In: Boyd, R., Lukishova, S., Zadkov, V. (eds) Quantum Photonics: Pioneering Advances and Emerging Applications. Springer Series in Optical Sciences, vol 217. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98402-5_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98402-5_13
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