Abstract
IN reference to Mr. Backhouse's letter last week (p. 145) we have nowhere stated that “similarity in colour in electric discharges is sufficient to indicate similarity of constitution, eyen when their spectra are quite unlike” If Mr. Backhouse will again read our paper on the Auroræ, he will see that we say that in the same gas the colour of the discharge varies with the degree of exhaustion. In the Phil. Trans., 1878, part 1, we have shown also that in the same gas at the same pressure the colour of the discharge varies with the amount of current; at pp. 180–181, for example, the strata in hydrogen at a pressure of 1.2 mm., 1579 M, were of a cobalt blue with a current of 0.019940 W, and pink with a current of 0.008504. W. In the index at p. 239 are given several references to the same phenomena; and at p. 240 references are given to a number of observations on the “spectra of strata and of glow on terminals.”
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DE LA RUE, W., MÜLLER, H. The Aurora Borealis and its Colours. Nature 22, 169 (1880). https://doi.org/10.1038/022169a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/022169a0
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