NEW CONCEPTIONS IN SCIENCE 



light, still less the vastly larger waves we call heat. 

 The smallest of the light- waves are about 400 fifj. in 

 length, the larger ones 800 /LC/U, two to four thousand 

 times the diameter of the molecule ; while the heat- 

 waves range from this to 70,000 /u/u or, say, a quar- 

 ter of a million times the pulsating source. This 

 is beyond anything of which we have experience. 

 In order to get a working picture of molecular ac- 

 tions, we have to imagine for the light- and heat- 

 bearing ether qualities so contradictory as to make 

 the entire subject unthinkable. You will find many 

 writers, scientific and other, talking glibly of the 

 ether as something which we can actually com- 

 prehend. It is not, and the confused and fuddled 

 thinking one finds about it, in high sources, is often 

 astonishing. 



Besides its free-path motion, and its heat and 

 light vibrations, every molecule is a magnet and is 

 electrified. Some are feeble, some are powerful, 

 and it is altogether probable that their magnetic 

 and electrical properties constitute what is called 

 chemical affinity. At any rate, the late Professor 

 Mayer, of the Stevens Institute, conceived, by 

 means of his floating magnets, some extremely 

 ingenious imitations of molecular or atomic ar- 

 rangement. Very small steel needles were stuck 

 through thin bits of cork. When these were placed 

 in the water, underneath a large magnet, they 



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