The Riddle of the Rainbow
From Early Legends and Symbolism to the Secrets of Light and Colour
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Chapter
Why Rainbows?
In which the author makes the case for our perennial fascination with rainbows.
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Chapter
The Naming of Parts
In which we familiarise ourselves with the rainbow’s principal features and learn that its many permutations are variations on theme of the interaction between sunlight and drops of water.
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Chapter
Tales from the Haunted Air
In which we survey myths about rainbows in which it is regarded either as a form of divine communication, a bridge between this world and the next or a malevolent serpent or dragon.
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Chapter
The Geometry of Light
In which we trace the several attempts to explain the rainbow by natural philosophers such as Thomas Harriot, Johannes Kepler and Marco de Dominis during the first half of the 17th C, which culminated in René ...
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Chapter
New Wine in Old Bottles
In which we expose the limitations of Newton’s ideas about light and consider the how discoveries by Francesco Grimaldi and the work of Christiaan Huygens led to the wave theory of light.
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Chapter
The Electric Rainbow
In which we learn of Michael Faraday’s electrical discoveries and how they led to James Clerk Maxwell’s revolutionary electromagnetic theory of light and the demise of Newtonian physics.
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Book
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Chapter
From Myth to Mathematics
is an acknowledgement that the rainbow is the embodiment of wonder has stood the test of time. In which we learn about the attempts to explain the rainbow along scientific lines from Ancient Greece in 600...
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Chapter
In the Eye of the Beholder
In which we describe and explain rare and unusual rainbows and dwell on the several ways of thinking about rainbows and conclude that we are the only creatures capable of seeing them.
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Chapter
The Celebrated Phenomena of Colours
In which we survey Newton’s ideas on light and colour and learn how he used these to improve on Descartes’ explanation of the rainbow, and asses the contributions to this project by Robert Hooke and Edmund Hal...
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Chapter
Unweaving the Rainbow
In which we retrace the steps that led Thomas Young and Augustin Fresnel to the wave theory of light and find out how it explained (almost) every feature of the rainbow.
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Chapter
Just Listening
The chapter deals with the subjective experience of hearing and introduces themes and topics that are taken up in later chapters. It opens with a brief history of the universal human aversion to sounds that ar...
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Chapter
Sound Science
An account of the science of sound and the hearing system. It covers the physical properties of sound, the purpose and evolution of the hearing system, the workings of the mammalian hearing system, sound locat...
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Book
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Chapter
Sounds Returned
Chapter 5 is about the reflection of sound and the many ways in which that affects what we hear. The symbolism and mythology of echoes. Echoes and whispering galleries of various sorts are described and explai...
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Chapter
Pythagoras’ Hammers
An account of some of the key discoveries about the nature of sound and how they influenced developments in other branches of science, notably ideas about the nature of light, the vacuum and atomism. Among the...
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Chapter
Sounds Abroad
The chapter deals with the passage of sound through air, water and earth over small and large distances and how the interaction between sound and its surroundings affects what we hear. Anomalous sound transmis...
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Chapter
Making Noise
Accounts of interesting and unusual sounds and explanations of how they are produced, arranged according to the cause they have in common i.e. those due to impact, resonance, friction, bubbles, wind and shock ...
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Article
Human IRGM regulates autophagy and cell-autonomous immunity functions through mitochondria
IRGM is a human GTPase that triggers autophagy in response to pathogen infection. On Mycobacteria infection, IRGM binds the mitochondrial cardiolipin to induce mitochondrial fission and a general autophagy res...
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Article
Resonance of the Mouth-Cavity
SINCE communicating to Mr. Sedley Taylor my recent observations on the capabilities of the mouth as a resonator, and forwarded to you, with my permission, for publication in NATURE, I have made the following e...
