Discovering Solar: It’s a Radiometer, I Wanted a Magic 8-Ball

August 7th, 2011 by Bob Higgins

One year they gave me a Crookes Radiometer.. I wanted a Magic 8-Ball

When I was a kid, my parents were big on educational toys. Most Christmases, in addition to a new bike or other barely affordable extravagance, I could expect to find, surrounded by a detestable pile of new socks and underwear, an erector set or a chemistry set, a microscope perhaps, and a couple of dime store curiosities like the device pictured at above.

I don’t remember much about that long-ago Christmas morning when I unwrapped the Crookes radiometer. I do remember that I was fascinated by it and still am today. It sat on my desk or window sill for a year or so until shattered by one of my brothers. Which brother was the culprit has never been determined, but I’m still on the case.

At the time, it was a quiet, inexpensive, solitary treat for a geeky 8-year-old. To watch the gizmo respond when I switched a desk lamp on and off or spin wildly when I placed it in direct sunlight was fascinating and wondering about light and heat, atoms, and the mysterious forces that surrounded me was better than TV — these were the days of the Indian Chief test pattern,.. there wasn’t much on.

Thinking about it this morning, I couldn’t remember what the gadget was called and had to search for solar-powered toys and solar vanes until I discovered with amusement that the Crookes radiometer has its own Wikipedia page.

What got me started on this reverie was a New York Times story about a guy who collected uranium, radium, and americium in an attempt to satisfy his curiosity about nuclear fission by reproducing it in his kitchen in Angelholm, Sweden.

I thought that was impressive. My early chemistry experiments succeeded only in stinking up the house, but Richard Handl managed to blow up his stove and get arrested in his quest to advance human knowledge. But after all, he was thirty one.

For years… in truth, until this morning, I would have said that the rotation of the radiometer’s vanes was caused by the pressure differential of the photons reflecting or being absorbed by the dark- or light-colored vanes. I was wrong, then and now.

It seems that Crooke and James Clerk Maxwell would have backed my theory back in 1873 but physics wizards like Lebedev and even Einstein got involved and disproved the photon pressure thing to Maxwell’s satisfaction, but never described exactly what causes the motion. Read the Wiki article, it’s enjoyable.

I’m glad, in a way, that the mystery that fascinated me for so long ago remains largely unsolved. I remember once fantasizing about building giant versions of this light mill to drill holes or drive turbines, but I think performing work on that scale is far beyond the realm. It’s nice, though, to find that the device may be doing some useful work as a tiny heat engine for use in medicine.

I don’t know if this describes the effects of educational toys on the impressionable minds of 8 year old boys or the limits of scientific genius in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but I’m in the market for another radiometer and when I break this cold case I’m going to make the culprit pay for it.

In the meantime, I’m setting up the kitchen for cold fusion. I’m going to stack salami, cappacola, peppers, onion, and cheese together on some fresh bread and see if the resulting fusion results in enough energy to mow the lawn.

About the Author

Bob Higgins Lifelong liberal of the Tom Paine wing. Marine Vietnam vet. Have worked as a photographer, cab driver, bartender, carpenter, cabinetmaker, writer and editor. Now retired on a Veterans Disability program I spend my time writing, and complaining about politics and the environment.

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http://www.facebook.com/people/Bruce-Miller/100000952005408 Bruce Miller

U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.! Imagine a nation so rich, so smart, so secure in the world, a whole web-page can be devoted to nonsense! Monday 8th of August, 2011, the first day the “Great American Misery”, the Great American Depression”, the First day of the American stock market Crash, Gold at $1750.00 U.S, and still rising,The first day of the end days, the latter days of the American Empire, and Yankee Doodle pokes fun at the very real foreign oil dependency, the energy problem that ruins his very economy. Off-griders, you were right! Great hoards of “White Shirts” to stream out of their air-conditioned Ivory Towers, to find little grows in the pavement jungles. They will roar off in their SUV’s until they run out of fuel, and find nothing on the roadside that is edible drinkable, and they will perish there, great fatted calves for the Asian funeral pyres, rotting in the hot sun.
Folks starving in Africa, middle East in flames, China warning about debt ceilings, even poor Canada searching the world for a better deal. China almost self-sufficient, with stringent but healthy diet of mostly veggies some fish, or some pork for flavor, now received the “nod” from the Capitalists at the Ford Motor Company, who recently invested $1.6 billion U.S. for ultra modern factories to be built near the “Empty Cities” once a laughing matter for American pundits, to be designed to be manned by 89 pound Asian women, the best of American technologies, techniques, patent, proprietary secrets metallurgical know how, all to go with the cash investment.
Joke if you will, but Solar Wave, Wind Hydro, Tidal, Geothermal, bio-mass, Anaerobic humanure processing for methane, Thorium fueled LFTR reactors, all part of China’s success story as are the Thorium fueled, LFTR reactors providing electricity for the bullet train networks and their associated human infrastructures, now being daisy chained Pan Eurasia as fast as humanly possible. These ‘Unit’ produce goods foreign oil parasite free, for so much less than possible in the U.S., they have replaced U.S.A. as manufacturer to the world in a decade!
Rub sticks for heat, Yankee Doodle! Your ass in grass! Ho! Ho! Ho!
Syam6969

This writer writes about himself. Nothing to get by reading this. total mess
Anonymous

Thank you for the correction concerning the radiometer’s principle of motion.