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Kirchhoff,
Gustav Robert German physicist Born: Konigsberg, Prussia, March 12, 1824 Died: Berlin, October 17, 1887 | |||||||||
Avogadro Becquerel Bohr Doppler Einstein Geiger Heisenberg Hertz Kirchhoff Planck Roentgen Rutherford Schrodinger |
Kirchhoff studied at the University of Konigsberg and did work in electrical theory. In 1854, he was appointed a professor of physics at Heidelberg, where he met Bunsen. Bunsen was interested in photochemistry and he studied the light of chemical reactions through coloured filters. Kirchhoff, with a background of mathematics and Newton, suggested passing light through a narrow slit, and thence to a prism. This caused different wavelengths of light to be refracted onto a scale in different positions and colors, creating the first spectroscope. It quickly became apparent that each chemical element, when heated to the point of incandescence, produced its own unique pattern of coloured lines. Sodium, for example, produced a double yellow line. This new analytical method was applied to assays, and in 1860, a mineral was found displaying unknown spectral lines. In this way the new element Cesium was discovered (latin for sky-blue) and within a year, Rubidium (latin for red), both named after the color of their spectral lines. Kirchhoff went on to study the solar spectrum, identifying elements such as sodium, gold and others on the sun. Kirchhoff also correctly predicted that a perfect black body which absorbed all radiation of all wavelengths, would emit all wavelengths if heated to incandescence. This study of black-body radiation was to prove of the greatest importance, because, a generation later, it was to lead to the quantum theory of Planck. | |||||||||
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