Quotes About Spectroscope

And what magnificent instruments of observation we possess in our senses! This nose, for example, of which no philosopher has yet spoken with reverence and gratitude, is actually the most delicate instrument so far at our disposal: it is able to detect tiny chemical concentrations that even elude a spectroscope.

One evening, the story goes, the two men were looking out of their laboratory window in Heidelberg at a fire raging in the nearby town of Mannheim. Curious about what might be burning, they pointed their spectroscope at the flames. They were able to detect the presence of the elements barium and strontium in the fire, whose spectra they had previously identified in their laboratory. The question struck them immediately: if they could analyse flames in Mannheim, why not the surface of the Sun?

Between them, Kirchhoff and Bunsen developed the spectroscope, which uses a prism to refract light. As Newton had

When Kirchhoff had studied sunlight with his spectroscope, he had detected a number of unaccountable dark bands in its spectrum. The light from the sun had to pass through its atmosphere, and he realized that these dark bands were the 'fingerprints' of the