Abstract
THE fact that carbon dioxide is dissociated at the low temperature of the surrounding medium, when green organs of plants are exposed to sunlight, has been often considered as somewhat paradoxical. Count Rumford was the first who tried to account for it by suggesting that this process takes place in spaces so small that the temperature produced by the absorption of light may approach the highest temperatures obtainable in our laboratories. More recently I tried to adduce in support of this ingenious interpretation some considerations, derived from the experimental study of the actual conditions of this photochemical process.1 Still more wonderful is the possibility of its going on, though very slowly, in diffused sunlight. But perhaps in the whole range of photo-chemical phenomena there is no fact more wonderful than the possibility of obtaining photographs of the remotest star or nebula.
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In my Croonian lecture on “The Cosmical Function of the Green Plant” (Proc. Roy. Soc., vol. lxxii., p. 454).
“Electricity and Matter.” (1903.)
NATURE, August 26, p. 253.
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TIMIRIAZEFF, C. Lines of Force and Chemical Action of Light. Nature 82, 67 (1909). https://doi.org/10.1038/082067b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/082067b0
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