Periodically we get asked, "What was it like growing up in Oak Ridge?" I'm sure we all have our favorite answers. I have a few I choose from, depending on who is asking the question. Here is one of my favorites.
Virtually every little kid eventually gets around to asking why the sky is blue. When I asked Daddy, I didn't get the pat answer, "Because God made it that way.”
We were in the car with the rest of the family and my older sister grew impatient with my questions which ended the lecture prematurely, but not after I learned that it took 8 minutes for the light to get from the Sun to Earth. WOW!
I got a lecture about the refraction of light and moisture in the air. The air is filled with little bitty drops of water. And light changes color when it goes through those little bitty drops of water. Very cool!
Then, a few months later I went next door to my best friend Arthur Snell's house. His Father, Dr. Snell (one of the leading nuclear physicists in the world at the time) had a glass prism on the coffee table. At my young age, I was really impressed at how big it was. Dr. Snell watched me pick it up without saying anything, except to warn me that it might be heavier than I anticipated. It was! To a preschool kid, it seemed like it was a foot on each side .
The quality of the prism was very exciting and captured my attention completely. The triangular shape of the prism bent the light and separated it into the colors of rainbow with great clarity.
I told my friend, "look at how this refracts the light!"
Dr. Snell whipped around to look at me and asked, "Bobby, how do you know that word?"
I preceded to give Dr. Snell a lecture on the refraction of light into the colors of the rainbow. LOL, he responded with his own lecture on the subject demonstrating the difference in light coming in the window from the light of a light bulb. Oh my!
And that is how I was introduced to Mr. Roy G Biv, before I even went to Kindergarten.
Scientific Note: Roy G Biv, is an acronym for the colors of the rainbow: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet in the order of longest waves to shortest.
Copyright B Keim, 2020
No comments:
Post a Comment