Contributors

From the time of the early Greeks to the time of Issac Newton people thought that light was made up of a stream of particles. During the 18th century a scientist named Thomas Young discovered that light is made up of waves, he discovered this because certain colors of light sometimes canceled each other out. Thomas Young also discovered that light waves that were about 0.000001m in length, small enough not to be visible but larger than atoms and molecules. Another thing that Young discovered was that wavelengths of visible light differed. He saw that red had the longest, followed by orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet.



William Hersche, a famous astronomer at his time, made important advancements to parts of the invisible part of the spectrum known as infrared. After an experiment that he conducted where he tried to measure the temperature of different colors he discovered that the hottest part of the spectrum was where there was no color at all. The hottest part of the spectrum was under the red part of the spectrum (infrared) where the wavelengths become invisible.

Infrared and Ultraviolet have all of the same properties of visible light, but have have shorter and longer wavelengths which the human eye can't detect.

William Roentgen discovered a glow coming from a chemical called barium platinocyanide that was sitting nearby a cathode ray tube. He noticed that when the tube was on a glow was emitted from the chemical. he tried to put a piece of cardboard between the tube and the chemical but the chemical still glowed. Roentgen discovered the first x-rays he later found out that they would pass through paper, thin sheets of metal, and flesh. He later won the first Nobel peace prize in physics for his discovery.