- Hello, Robert.
- Hello, Robert. I've said a thousand times that we do not call Robert at each other.
I know that your name is Robert Wilhelm Bunsen and Gustav Robert Kirchhoff I am, but we'll make a mess if we call Robert at each other. So I call you Bunsen and Kirchhoff call me, okay?
- Yes, I know, Kirchhoff. I have said a thousand times. Only did to make you wildly. Oh, by the way, have you seen my lighter? I always lose.
- Yes, I have used this morning to burn some stuff.
- Speaking of burning ... Have you looked out the window today?
- No, it was concentrated running our experiment with the spectrograph. I'm burning elements and analyzing the light they emit. I'm almost done.
- Well there's a big fire in the city. Look.
- Wow! Much smoke.
"Yes and the flames ... What color are more rare!
- Oysters! They look like a. .. What do you bet that I am able to tell what is burning.
- Come on!
"Yes, yes ... Precisely this morning I've been burning sodium and color of the flames I saw are very similar to these. How about if we pass the light from the flames of incencio by the spectrograph and compared its spectrum with that got me this morning. I am convinced that I have reason.
So I guess I should go about the conversation that day in the nineteenth century Kirchhoff and Bunsen discovered that there was to know the composition of things by analyzing the light emitted by the spectrograph. Effectively, what that day was a factory burned salted and salt consists of sodium and chlorine. So Kirchhoff won the bet.
A simple version of a spectrograph is simply a glass prism that splits white light into colors that are made.
The cover of the album 'Dark Side of the Moon' by Pink Floyd shows how a
glass shaped prism can separate white light into colors that up.
However, sodium, like other elements of the periodic table, is that when burned does not emit all colors of the rainbow but nothing a few colors. The rest of the rainbow is dark in the spectrum. The set of colors Broadcast every element is as his fingerprints. Each element emits its own color scheme.
Kirchhoff himself had the idea to bring his experiment further. If you had been able to know what was burning in the factory at the other end of the city, should also be able to know what it's made the Sun by analyzing their light, right?
And indeed, Kirchhoff was the first to identify the composition of the Sun, which is mainly composed of hydrogen and helium. Later the same method was also applied to determine the composition of stars, more distant than the Sun, seeing that consist essentially the same elements.
Al spectrum of the sun is missing some colors. Are those that have absorbed the
gas atmosphere (mostly hydrogen and helium).
And it's curious that these elements are elements that are also found on Earth. Ie. The sky is not made of foreign material that we mortals can not understand, but the stars are made of hydrogen and helium with which children play with their balloons in the shape of Tweety or Lightning McQueen. words, that again without needing to leave our city can
come to know things about the universe we may never get to see site but we can know, for example, which is composed of the same elements that are burning in factories our city.
From our corner of the universe is also possible to know the temperature of the stars. In space no air. The stars are "vacuum packed" and everyone knows (well, all except George Lucas) that the vacuum can not have explosions or combustion, because this requires oxygen. So the stars do not shine because they are burning anything but simply for being to a high temperature. Yes, just as much when you heat a metal, it begins to turn red and shine more and more the more temperature rises, the stars also shine by being so hot (the surface of the Sun, for example, is about 6000 degrees of temperature).
The lava coming out of volcanoes is so hot that it emits its own light.
Similarly, the Sun emits light.
And the color also changes with temperature. As the body warms up first becomes red, but more temperature goes through all the colors of the rainbow. Becomes yellow, blue and violet. If you look good, the stars of heaven have slightly different colors. There are some more red and more blue. Only that now you can get along with your friends and one day you go to see the stars I can say that the sky blue star must be hotter than the red that looks there.
Humans also conspicuous by virtue of being at 37 degrees.
We emit light. But as our temperature is so small (compared to the stars) emit infrared light, ie heat. So the alien from 'Predator' is capable of being in the woods behind the branches, because we are infrared bulbs and we are setting the pace.
But back to see how he does the human bulb called Kirchhoff:
- Good.
- Hello, Mr. Kirchhoff. Nice to see you again. Into my office, between.
- It's good to see you.
- What should I visit?
- would need to extract a few frames of your bank to pay a small matter.
- Sure, sure. Now fix it. By the way, I've read in the press that has managed to find out what it's made the Sun
- Yes. This is ...
- I do not know what it loses time with that ... Let's see ... Imagine finding gold in the sun What would know if we can not go there and bringing it to us on Earth.
- Well. . .
- Nothing, nothing. I tell him it's a waste of time. So ... How many frames need land?
Go! Kirchhoff was unsure how to answer that. Although legend has it that when, some time later, Kirchhoff was awarded a gold medal and a bag of coins in recognition of his discoveries, Kirchhoff first thing he did was pass it to the "friendly" banker with a note saying "Here is you the Golden Sun. "
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