The other day, when I wrote the second part of On rainbows, I finished and left quite abruptly by simply dropping a number of pictures at the end of the post without any explanation(s). That happened because I'd intended to go back and continue it. This morning, however, I decided instead to leave it as it was and start writing a new one.
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A few days ago I sent an email to Prof. Dr. Dietrich Zawischa, who is the man in charge of this website, with the following message:
Dear Dr. Zawischa,
It is deeply disturbing to see how grossly wrong people in your position can be in this day and age. Please take a quick look through a triangular prism at the picture attached and you'll see immediately what I mean (even though this is merely only one of the many, many flaws in your understanding of light and colour).
Have a good day, Professor.
To that email I had attached the picture below.
The following day I received this reply from Dr. Zawischa:
Dear Mr. Poradin,
may be it is even worse than you think. I took a thorough look through a triangular prism at the picture which you attached and I tried hard, but I could not see what you mean. Sorry.
Best regards
Dietrich Zawischa
I answered immediately :
Dear Dr. Zawischa,
Thank you for your reply, even though I couldn't quite make out if it was candid, or sarcastic. In any event, after this email I'll be in a better position to judge.
The image I asked you to scrutinise was in regard to what you have asserted in your site about the apparent absence of the yellow colour in certain so-called subjective prismatic observations ("The spectrum of visible light-where is the yellow?"). Now, please take your prism, hold it with its vertex pointing to the left and then look carefully through it at each of the vertically displayed rectangles in the picture from different distances. The best way to do that is to place your prism very close to the screen monitor and then to slowly increase the distance between it and the screen by slowly bringing the prism closer and closer to your observing eye. If you do that then you should certainly be able to see perfectly what I mean.
Regards,
Remus Poradin
A few hours later landed in my inbox the following:
A few hours later landed in my inbox the following:
Dear Mr. Poradin,
I have taken a photograph of your picture through my prism. Well, it was easier to do with the vertex of the prism pointing to the right. The distance from the computer screen to the prism was about 1.5 m.
So this is what I saw, and it is exactly what I expected to see. I discuss only the rightmost part due to the white stripe. As the computer screen uses the primaries Red, Green, and Blue and no yellow primary, in this case there is really no yellow in the spectrum. And there is a gap between green and blue. If the same image were printed on white paper and illuminated by daylight, the result would of course be quite different. Such images can be seen on my page on the prism. Before continuing our discussion, you should consider what I have written there. And do the experiments!
If you want an answer, you should ask a question instead of letting me guess what your question might be. I still don't know exactly what is your problem.
Best regards
Early the next morning I quickly made a short (1 min 26 s) video, uploaded it on You Tube and then sent Dr. Zawischa the message below.
Dear Professor,
Watch this 1 minute video https://youtu.be/x6x3K-g1mi4
Kind regards
Finally, a few short hours later I received this most expressive reply:
So what?
So what?! For instance, dear Dr. Zawischa, the fact that you didn't figure out that the Yellow component of the spectrum should become visible when the observation is conducted from a short distance to the source of light shows that you were probably not aware about the direct relationship that exists between the width of the spectral bands and the distance between the prism and the source of light. Or, as another example... Arghh, forget it. So what, indeed. After all, I am no longer troubled by any blatancy of the sort. "Hard to believe that so it is, today" I'm suddenly hearing myself in a quieter corner of my brain (which causes a convoluted smile on my face when I notice my instinctive placing of a comma before the last word). Ha, you're funny.
Ten years ago when I began this journey I was convinced that in a few short weeks I'll be finished writing about my understanding of optics and start laying down my vision of the subject that was closest to my heart at the time: the fundamental geometry of spacetime. Ten years later I find myself still dwelling on the subject of optics, light and colour, and without any clear idea of when I'll be able to finally dedicate my time to the spatiotemporal geometry. One could say that I haven't managed to get very far in this time. But one would be wrong. I know that. I'm the only one who can know that.
Ten years ago when I began this journey I was convinced that in a few short weeks I'll be finished writing about my understanding of optics and start laying down my vision of the subject that was closest to my heart at the time: the fundamental geometry of spacetime. Ten years later I find myself still dwelling on the subject of optics, light and colour, and without any clear idea of when I'll be able to finally dedicate my time to the spatiotemporal geometry. One could say that I haven't managed to get very far in this time. But one would be wrong. I know that. I'm the only one who can know that.
Three years ago, on the first day of 2015, I began my own foray into the subject of rainbows because I was convinced that the conventional understanding of the phenomenon had to be wrong. Two days later I became certain of it and began laying down the reasons for which I believed that. Three years on I'm still dwelling on the subject of rainbows and as yet I haven't managed to lay on the table my entire contribution to the cause. One could say that I haven't worked very hard in this time. But one would be wrong. I know that. Alternatively one could say that perhaps I haven't been very efficient, and this time one would be right. I'm a slow thinker. I know that.
We have all heard at one time or another prominent physicists saying that if you cannot express in plain language what you think you know then you don't really know. But that's only half of the story. So let me add to it the other half that I think is missing. If you cannot express in plain language what you think you know in a manner that the common thinker should understand, then you don't really know anything. Now that's what I believe. Strongly.
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Since I let the cat out of the bag in my previous post I will continue the discussion here, even though that has changed somewhat the plan I had drawn in mind a few weeks ago. (In that plan I was going to reveal the fatal problem, which I denoted as problem number 1 in that post, right at the end of my discussion about rainbows.) In view of that I will first give you a quick summary about how I have dealt in the past few months with the arguments raised by Dr. Markus Selmke against my understanding of the rainbow phenomena, and then we'll continue with our discussion from the previous post.
As I have written quite extensively in some of the more recent posts of this blog, over a period of one year or so Dr. Selmke sent me a rather significant number of (furious) emails meant to show me once and for all that I was absolutely wrong in my belief that the conventional view of rainbows (of atmospheric optics in general) was flawed. Effectively, in those emails he listed the most powerful arguments he probably deemed as being crucial in a rational assessment of the issue. On top of that, as any other good scientist, he also supplied a number of papers that he must have considered not only relevant to the topics, but also suitable for a layman like myself. In hindsight, I now take the opportunity to thank Dr. Selmke for everything he's done in that respect and at the same time to openly acknowledge that his help has proved to be most beneficial in the expansion of my overall understanding. Moreover, I want to also make good use of this opportunity in order to assure Dr. Selmke that I have taken ample time to not only examine with diligence all the literature he'd provided, but to also conduct every single experiment that was presented in that literature and stood within my capabilities. Finally, I want to let everyone who's reading these pages know that as we'll go along with our discussion in this and the following posts, I will regularly refer to and present some of the more relevant conventional experiments that I have conducted in this time, as well as many of my own, non-conventional ones.
One of the most striking things that I've discovered in my investigation of the rainbow phenomena is the preponderant reluctance of the establishment of mainstream physicists to unequivocally and unilaterally declare whether the rainbow is a real or a virtual image. One, I think, ought to be rather suspicious about such an obvious noncommittal from those who otherwise claim that the mystery of rainbows has been basically elucidated. I, for one, being a Romanian by birth and a Greek by choice, certainly am. I am so because the simple and plain truth is that the issue in question couldn't be any clearer than it actually is. To see why I say that let's take a quick look first at what Wikipedia has to say about it.
In view of the above and due to the below,
If the conventional understanding of rainbow observation is flawed, as you claim, do you have a better, assessable explanation for it?
I do.
Based on my past experience in dealing with subjective prismatic observations I designed and conducted many experiments concerned with the formation and observation of rainbows. In the rest of this post I will present a summary of the most relevant of those experiments and I will also show you some of the conclusive results I have been fortunate enough to discover in the process.
Since I had known for a long time before conducting any rainbow experiment that Newton's theory of light and colour was not quantitatively but qualitatively flawed, I was confident that any other theory based on the Newtonian optical view had inherited its innate defects and was therefore commensurately affected and vulnerable itself. I ought to perhaps mention at this point the two most significant and damaging of those defects. They are: 1) the fact that in subjective prismatic experiments the three primary spectral colours (Red, Green and Blue--henceforth RGB) do not obey Snell's Law; 2) the fact that the distribution of the spectral colours in a ray of light was invariable, precise and longitudinally ordered. Specifically now: in regard to point 1 I knew that in subjective prismatic observations R and B refract (bend) in opposite directions while G doesn't refract at all; in regard to point 2 I knew that in a ray of light the distribution of the spectral colours was always running longitudinally in a reversed formation to the typical Newtonian order of dispersion (VBGYOR instead of ROYGBV). It was because of these two major theoretical defects in Newton's theory that I believed myself of being able to identify (and probably resolve) any similar problems that are still outstanding in the conventional optics.
I began my rainbow experimentation with a basic setup, in which I used a simple source of light (in the form of a LED flashlight) to shine on a glass ball and cast the image onto a screen (wall, to be exact). With that setup I managed to obtain pretty good results, and to learn a fair bit about the rainbow phenomenon. For example I thus managed to project both the primary and the secondary rainbows on a single screen, which some conventional physicists had asserted that it was an impossibility. Another useful thing that I managed to see and learn was that in spite of the conventional belief that in certain situations the secondary rainbow cannot be seen because it is "lost" within the image of the primary rainbow the secondary rainbow is clearly visible even when it happens to be within the confines of its brother. See the photos below, which (like all other imagery I produce) have not been altered in any shape or form.
Perhaps the most insightful experiments that I carried out in my investigation were concerned with what kind of effects, if any, could be seen by the observer if the distance between the source of light and the 'raindrop' was gradually changed in either direction (meaning both increased and decreased). From those experiments I learned the most about the behaviour of light in a spherical medium. For instance, it was thus that I learned the intimate relationship that exists between the primary rainbow, the secondary one and Alexander's Dark Band.
That's all for now, but before bidding you goodbye I'll drop below a couple of pics and invite any physicist who might stumble across this page to see if he or she can figure out how they have been done. (There are no tricks of any kind involved, I assure you.)
Hooroo.