Thanks! This video brought back memories from when I was an undergrad back in the mid '60's, working as a dust-rag boy in the physics department. A new 1.5 m spectrograph had just arrived and I got to set it up and do the initial calibration. After doing a number of sprectra of various elements, I set out to observe Fraunhofer lines. Problem was how to get sunlight into the small basement lab. I used five large WW2 surplus mirrors to reflect the light from the parking lot, down the hall, into the lab, etc., and onto the entrance slit of the spectrograph. It worked! Those were fun times and I was so fortunate to have to "work" for a part of my tuition!
@@skybot9998 Earned a PhD in solid state physics and then taught electronics at a small community (two-year, junior) college. Also wrote intro-level books in radio servicing (yes) and technical physics. I was born to be a teacher and I liked the small college environment. A good run!
Fascinating to understand (as best I am able) how the timelines of light, electricity and matter exploration first proceeded in parallel and then came together in a heated rush (as the Pointer Sisters had it) to give us science as we understand it today. How these pioneers did what they did with no instrumentation, no mathematics and very little intuition (sadly so in the case of the brave Curies) as to the magnitude of what they were grappling with, defeats me. To me, it is iron cast, unwavering intellectualism, the purest application of brain power, that saw them through to the achievements we laud today. It's clear that right back in the beginning, Faraday was actually wrestling with the very basic concepts of energy and matter, struggling with puzzles that we only came to start to understand 200 years later. Amazing people. Thank you, Kathy, for your videos. As they say, nothing dies on social media and I think people will be watching your stuff for many years to come.
I am amazed at how much work and research you have put into these videos. I like the way they string together to tell the complete history. You have so much enthusiasm, which makes them a joy to watch.
Thank you pretty much for all of your videos. I enjoy the way you simplify scientific advancements and making the science very clear and humanised even to the layman. Love from Palestine
My computer says I have 1,300 views which is better than 160 but still, I can't help but think I would have millions of views if I just posted videos of my cat defecting... because... youtube
Thanks.. I will. I checked out your RU-vid channel and I should say the same. Are you interested in doing a collaborative video about Quantum Mechanics? My email is in the description of this video if you are. Cheers, Kathy
What can be said in 1961worked in a lab using Bunsen burner in chemistry lab but never bothered who that name was. Today knowing that how and what he has developed has transformed entire cooking systems in every home and saving environment and eyes of ladies from the fuel wood smoke is how science benefits HUMANITY in UNKNOWN ways. Thanks for your study and comprehensive approach in the field of science in general and physics particularly.
Great video Kathy! I have worked with IR spectroscopy, gamma ray spectroscopy, alpha particle spectroscopy and positron spectroscopy! But the visible spectra are the most exciting and I remember doing these measurements in school and observing the double line of sodium. I even had a book from the Victorian age (which belonged to my father) with beautiful pull-out plates with the spectra of all the main elements. Someone threw it out during a clearing of our old house, probably worth money nowadays had I kept it safe...
Chemist Here...Three types of spectroscopy revolutionized Organic Chemistry in the 1960's: IR and NMR spectroscopy and High resolution Mass Spectrometry, coupled with the new techniques of GL Chromatography, column chromatography, and other types of chromatography. Prior to that time, the limits of synthesis and analysis had been reached. The expense and time invested for the synthesis and characterization of any new compounds was not worth the investment. Now I could run a reaction, separate the products and determine the structures in one or two days rather than months.
I’ve just spent the better part of an afternoon binge watching you videos. I would just love to see someone do something similar for chemistry. It’s a pity we don’t have a John Read around to do it. His book “Humour and Humanism in Chemistry” (1947, G. Bell & Sons, London) takes a somewhat similar approach, dealing as much with the people involved as with the theory and practice, sometimes very funny. I have to thank you for an interesting and informative afternoon.
I have left Netflix for this, quite addictive. You tell great things in a simple format like a story. It sounds so easy- almost like the gymnasts showing their skills. These videos are sure to inspire a lot of people. Thank you.
Another awesome video. So rich with historical anecdotes that made the physics even more interesting and the scientists come alive. I have never felt so close to Bunsen, Plank and Kirchhoff before this video. Thanks very much Kathy for such a wonderful and inspiring work.
I worked in a government laboratory connected to a museum which eventually closed down. As equipment became obsolete it was put into storage and forgotten. When the museum was closed I had the job of recovering the collections and other items. This included the obsolete instruments, several of which were beautifully made ones from Victorian era instrument makers. This include an old spectrograph virtually identical to the Bunsen and Kirchkoff instrument shown in your video
Your videos debunking myths of the science field and also telling how everything started are so fascinating! If I had infinite time, I would just sit all day watching them until there was nothing left!
So good I had to watch it twice and I know most of the information involved already. But it did make me take a step back and think about how Johnson-Nyquist noise is directly related to radiation of a blackbody, which is something that I never thought about before. Thanks as always, I love your videos.
@@Kathy_Loves_Physics It is also related to as Noise temperature. Useful electronic circuits all have resistors in them and the higher the temperature the higher the noise produced by the resistors in the circuit. In most analogue circuits the level of the noise generated by this effect is so small, as to be negligible, but for extremely low signal levels like those seen by amateur radio operators or astronomical radio telescopes it become a limiting factor for the distance from which a signal can be received. And it is one of the reasons why antennas are made bigger and bigger when looking at weaker and weaker signals or when looking at signals that occupy a larger range of the RF spectrum (AKA more bandwidth). Another solution is to cryogenically cool the first few amplifiers stages in a circuit. (e.g. the 70 meter dishes used to receive signals from the voyager space probes, would use a cryogenic ultra-low-noise amplifier for the first stage or first few stages of amplification until the signal level is raised well above the normal room temperature noise floor).
@@itsevilbert :: Why not change your name? ☻But even if I balk at believing anything said by a "Count Dracula" I must say that the description of how to do radio-communication with Voyager is answering many questions I have had regarding those (and other) inter-solar system communications.
Great video as always. Contains a minor error. You say gas around the sun absorbs more radiation than it emits. That is not so. It absorbs the same as it emits but the relevant radiation it absorbs is traveling towards us so in one direction, but it emits it in all directions, hence the black lines.
This is excellent history. There are so many other spectrographic-like phenomena that are used in science: NMR, various chromatography methods, Mossbauer spectroscopy, etc. that perhaps should be pointed out, that this was just the start.
I'm going to do an amateur spectroscopy course very soon, and I'm so excited and delighted to watch and rewatch this series, giving an overview of this field !! Thank you so much.
Spectrometry is very important for my trade as an agronomist, for all nutrient levels in soil and leaf analyses are determined by spectroscopy. Thanks to Mr Bunsen and Mr K.
Hi Kathy, even though I‘m interest in physics since school, your videos are still inspiring and full of new details. Thanks 🙏🏻 BTW, I lived the last 25J in Heidelberg, the main city of this episode.
I love science facts that put abstract ideas into perspective, like: Sixty billion of one percent of the sun is gold; Yet, the sun is "so immense " that 60th billionth of one percent of the sun is approximately equal to all the water in the ocean. (Wow, what a piece of information - which helps, at least for me, to put the sun's size into some realization!)
Just watched this one whilst on holiday in Edinburgh-fascinating and educational as ever-amazing channel. Kathy, you are fabulous- funny, idiosyncratic in that intellectual and fun way… I look forward to watching the whole series and recommend this channel to anyone with an interest in physics and the personalities behind its development.
Ok, You win! I've watched a few of your videos and found them very interesting. You are truly a modern James Burke (Connections). I've been a science fanboy all my life and having heard many lectures on spectroscopy, I avoided watching this one because I thought I had this s**t down. Boy was I wrong. I present you with the highest honor I can possibly give (and I'm pretty stingy with these in general)... Liked & Subscribed!!
Thank you so much for the video. My mind was blown away after knowing that each element have their own "optical fingerprint". And with this, we are able to learn abit more about the Sun. Amazing. I always thought life was boring, but turns out, i was soo wrong. Its been a long time since i was this excited. Thank you again. You saved me.
This is a good introduction to a topic still not correctly dealt with in current astronomical literature. Especially when considering the shapes of fast rotating stars. We get splits in spectral lines from electric fields and magnetic fields. We get Doppler shifts in spectral lines with everything from a star orbiting a companion, to a star growing and shrinking (radial velocity pulsations). Then a smearing of lines, due to everything from rotation, to updrafts and downdrafts, etc. Yet, it’s amazing how much we assume we can get from looking at the spectral lines of a distant object like a star. For example, we know that the sun is amazingly spherical, and not flattened as much as we think it should be by its rotation. Yet when we view a distant star, and get that it is “flattened into an oblate spheroid”, we get that mostly from the spectral lines, and not that we can visually observe how flattened the star is. You see the mess of assumptions already here. Also interesting, is if you look at the work on radial velocity oscillations of K giants, you see that they are finding these apparent radial velocity changes are not due to a star orbiting a companion, but perhaps intrinsic to the star. So why is that? That’s something to work out first maybe, before we say with confidence everything else we think we get from this data. I’ll go out on a limb, and predict that just as the sun is more spheroidal than it should be, given it’s rotation, so are especially the hot blue stars we see “nearly flattened” by rotation. It’s important to know just how many things affect the spectral lines, before we go to mapping out star shapes with just that information.
Kathy....you tricked me ! Using Bunsen burners in high school...who knew? I thought your videos would only be collected anecdotes of scientists past.....YES ...AND....you're teaching STEM at the same time....you are wonderful ! Thanks
Hi again! I love hearing trivial tidbits that never made it into my normal education about these people and their subject matters. I don't think I ever knew about AGB's deaf wife, and I never knew about how Bunsen was tragically absent-minded. I like hearing about how the people and the discoveries they were making were influencing others outside of their own fields. I read a long time ago in (I think) an ASME publication (mid 80s to mid 90s?) about how it was largely due to mechanical engineering design advances that hard drives became smaller and faster.
Except that Feynman was a very cool dude and Bunsen with a ridiculously spacey and dorky dude which is what I love about him. Like, he would show up to a party on the wrong day and everyone would love him so much that they would just re-invite people to the party and pretend that he didn’t get it wrong. Honestly, Robert Benson is one of my favorite scientist of all time.
@@Kathy_Loves_Physics I'm currently researching the idea 'in ancient times, how big did the people think the universe was' and your other videos do a great job in helping me around that subject!
Wow that is a lovely comment. I think I have made like 10 hours of video! (I have about 12 that are not directly in the electricity timeline BTW so you have a few more videos then you thought you did)
That's a pretty good presentation, but unless you were unclear, you've misrepresented Bunsen and Kirchoff's spectroscope. Fraunhofer did use a moveable arm to adjust the wavelength being observed.
The theory of the type of light by wavelength is the principal that for at least 3 decades was the only way we had in the medical laboratory(i.e flame photometry) of determining the level of an element in our bodies i.e. sodium or as is necessary for smooth muscle movement, potassium. Even today a component of some psychiatric medications, lithium is accurately determined by the use on that kind of analyzer.
Thanks for referring to this from your "Max Planck Quantum Theory" - RU-vid video. I knew about spectral lines in general, but haven't used it since HighSchool, and maybe never knew that Hydrogen lines were black in the sun-light spectrum; this presentation is clearing things up. I still have to go back to the Planck and Kirchhoff video, of course.
Bunsen, sounds like, if he was alive today...he would be some college or university's beloved professor somewhere within their science department...and I would love to have the privilege of taking his courses.
Kirchhoff's Law has been studied in detail by Pierre Marie Robitaille. He is a spectroscopist by training but also developed the first 8 Tesla MRI. He insists Kirchhoff erred in stating his law and that not all cavities produce black body radiation. This had led him to many other interesting conclusions not only about black body radiation but about the sun as well.
at 8:00, you talk about the concentration of gold in the sun's atmosphere . My question : is the spectrum alone enough to determine the relative abundance of elements in the sun? If not, how is it determined? Thanks for another great video
I see a great but unused potential for this channel. Content-speaking I loved every video I watched so far, really interesting stuff. Well-written too, really well explained. A lot of care to make people understand and take interest in this stuff is apparent. And it is working. But the execution is kind of holding this channel from expanding in my opinion. By that I mean if Kathy invested in better equipment, learned more about recording and mixing sound and music, camera and lighting and maybe hire some semi-pro or pro graphics/animations guy, those could be the next steps of taking this the next level and making it big (and maybe redoing all older videos with those at the disposal). I really think this could esasily become Kathy's full-time and well-paying job rather than the hobby.
Thank you for the kind words and the important feedback. I know that my execution is lacking. Problem with a new RU-vid channel is you have to become an expert in everything: filming, editing, graphics, you name it. And, frankly, I have zero background in any of it. However, you are right in that I can (and should) invest in learning more about what I am doing. If you have any suggestions for online film classes or where to find semi-pro graphics folks I would be very interested. Anyway, thanks again and glad you liked the content. Cheers, Kathy
It's true what you said about Kathy's videos , but the converse is she tells a good(truthful(we can't ever get to the full facts)) story direct to the audience in a modest way, the thunder & lightning is in the story of science & maths!? 🙂
Your channel is such a blessing. I was just thinking and hoping to find a trustworthy physics resource for self-education and teaching. Thank you for your love for God’s world and for the historical sources in these papers!
Spectroscopy is more valuable to (remote sensing) analyze hot objects that emits light, and less valuable on cold objects. Astrophysics is not about only hot objects.
Check out the film titled "Medicine Man" , starring Sean Connery . It unites applied spectroscopy with studies in ecology and in medicine . Also , the character development and sociological issues of that situation are prominently featured . It is a great movie and it reminds me of your set of lectures about Westinghouse and Tesla .
What an extraordinary story about such a simple invention. It would have been possible to observe these lines in the Middle Ages, when glass manufacturing would have permitted the prism. What knowledge is within our grasp today that we are unaware of? Spectroscopy also contributed to the Big Bang theory: Edwin Hubble saw that distant galaxies were moving away because the spectra were red-shifted.
This was grate, as in optical grating! The role of photographic film deserves mention as does a company called Jarrell-Ash which brought much of this to the Americas. Nice presentation.
I really like your videos. I have a suggestion: it would be helpful if you would put the number you assign to your videos in the youtube title. I get your videos from youtube's recommendations, and you often mentions previous videos and subsequent videos, but it's hard to find them on you youtube channel and would be much easier if the video number you give each video was in the youtube title.
Thank you for your excellent videos. The history shows us the abolished alternatives on the way to a right guess, and it makes the scientific process alive. Otherwise you have somehow to believe in the chosen established model, the long work of searching is essential. Is there a parallel attempt to show the development of mathematical physics in the like manner (for example for Oliver Heaviside and his vector calculus, that you mentioned)? It would be revealing. Could you try it? Thank you.
Interesting as always! The emission spectra of the elements periodic table is neat! I was OK with the spelling of Kirchhoff, but the debate was whether to pronounce the 'h'. Sounds like not.
Oh I would never trust my pronunciation ability. Never. I’m actually trying but I’ve been told repeatedly that I am getting it wrong almost every time.
