The Aurora Borealis is made when storms on the the sun form solar winds, or large streams of charged particles streaming toward the earth.These streams could have upward of ten million megawatts of electrical power. That is enough power to light up Los Angeles. It generally takes about three days for these streams of particles to reach the earth's upper atmosphere, or ionosphere. When these charged particles hit the earth's atmosphere, they excite the atoms contained in the atmosphere. These excited atoms have a higher energy state that usual and so want to get back to a more normal energy state. The excited atoms give off excess energy in the form of heat, or the case of the Aurora Borealis, light. The trillions of excited atoms give off enough light so that we can see the light from where we live on the ground, 43-200 miles above us.
The Aurora Borealis is most often seen in a striking green color, but it also occasionally shows off its many colors ranging from red to pink, blue to purple, dark to light. The reason that the aurora is seen in so many colors is that our atmosphere is made up of many different compounds like Oxygen and Nitrogen. When the charged particles that come from the sun hit the atoms and molecules of the Earth's atmosphere, they excite those atoms, giving off light. Different atoms give off different colors of the spectrum when they are excited. A familiar example is the Neon lights that we see on many business signs in our modern world. The Neon lights contain the gas Neon. These lights have electricity run through them to excite the Neon gas. When the Neon is excited, it gives off a brilliant red-orange color. The Neon lights are the same idea as the aurora, only on a lot smaller scale.
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... as a story from Scotland, tell of battles in the sky with showers of red blood. A story from the Northern Hebrides attributes the aurora to supernatural beings called Blue Men. During an active display of the aurora the Blue Men are called the Merry Dancers also known as na fir chlis (Gaelic for quick, nimble men). When the aurora moves rapidly, there is believed to be a battle going on between clans. The red light was attributed the the blood spilled during these battles.
In Norse mythology, there is reference to Bifrost, or a bridge to the sky built by the Gods. This bridges was said to be on fire to keep the Giants out. In Medieval art, the aurora was dipicted as candles in the sky. In Greenland, it was said that the aurora represented the dead playing with the head of a walrus. No matter what the tale, they are all interesting and are worthy of reading.
...nd violet wavelengths are the shortest, and violet is the least visible to the human eye. These wavelengths are scattered throughout the day and caused by a redirection of the light-waves direction due to gas molecules in the atmosphere (Mc Knight, p. 84). When the sun is setting towards the end of the day there are few blue wavelengths left and we see orange and red which are dominant and the longest wavelengths of visible light to the human eye. At the bottom of the photo (closest to the setting sun) red and orange are the dominant visible colors with the occasional blue and almost violet. If our eyes could not see orange and red our sunsets would be a dark blue or black.
Rudd’s (2009) essay evaluates Enid Blyton’s work offering a different perspective to account for the appeal and popularity of the author. This essay looks at the aspects raised by Rudd. How Blyton, Pullman and Ransom illustrate the different aspects of a good or a bad book. The way critics confer prestige on a book or author and the arising criticism. How the agenda of the committees affects the selection of prize-winners. Finally, looking at the factors involved in success.
On May 13th, 1917 three children were playing games in the field while tending their sheep. Suddenly they saw a flash of light. Thinking it to be lightning, the children gathered the sheep and started for home. They took refuge under a tree about a hundred yards away. They saw a flash of light again. They began running when they saw, standing over a small holmoak tree, a Lady dressed in white more brilliant than the sun.
For many years astronomers and people alike have constantly heard about the observations and records of the Chinese and Europeans. No other culture can provide as much information as that gathered by the Chinese and Europeans, but there are many other cultures that observed and recorded the night sky, one of those being the Native Americans. During the last fifteen to twenty years archaeoastronomers have uncovered much concerning the beliefs and records of Native Americans. Unfortunately, the methods of keeping records of astronomical events were not as straight forward as the Chinese and Europeans. The Native Americans had to use what they could to record what they observed. Their records were found on rock and cave drawings, stick notching, beadwork, pictures on animal skins and story telling. One of the few dateable events among the various records of Native Americans was the 1833 appearance of the Leonid meteor shower.
Lightning is a natural electric force that I chose. The cause of lightning requires to types of charges negative and positive. A storm cloud is divided into two parts top being being positive and the bottom being negative. The reason for lighting to happen is because of this thing called charge separation which one positive charge and one negative charge split in half. Up to millions of water droplets are contained in one storm cloud. Water from the ground evaporates, and rises from the ground and goes up to the cloud rises up and comes together as it goes up to the cloud. The clouds collides with the moisture and then go up into the cloud. When they hit, the electrons get taken off the droplets, making the negative electrons turn into a positive electron. The moisture will always look for cold temperatures at a higher altitude. At a cold temperature the water will freeze. The particles then come together and form a region that’s inside the water. The frozen portion of the water of moisture becomes negatively charged and the outer droplets which gives it a more positive charge. The currents inside the cloud rip the protons off the droplets and move them inside the cloud and goes to the positive side. The frozen particles which contain the negative charges are then moved to the bottom half. Making the clouds polarized. The mechanism is what causes the polarization of the storm clouds. A storm cloud becomes polarized when one positive charge moved to the top of the clouds and one negative charges moving towards the bottom of the cloud.
...sed using a spectroscope. Neon is often used in signs because of its production of an unmistakable bright reddish-orange light. Although still referred to as "neon", other colors are generated with the variety of noble gases and by various colors of fluorescent lighting. Neon is also used in vacuum tubes, high-voltage indicators, lightning arrestors, wave meter tubes, television tubes, and helium neon lasers. When Neon is liquefied it is commercially used as a cryogenic refrigerant and the lower temperature range becomes more attainable with more the extreme liquid helium refrigeration. Neon both as a gas and a liquid are relatively expensive for example; the price of liquid neon even in small quantities can be more than 55 times that of liquid helium. The reason for neon's expense is because of neon’s rarity which unlike helium, can only be obtained from the air.
Tidwell, James N. "Folklore in the News." Western Folklore 14 (1955): 213-14. Web. 9 Apr. 2014.
So the Moon should have risen big and bright on the night of May 19, but it failed to do so. Not a trace of it. Nor could any stars be seen either. The day had been as dark as midnight over much of New England, and though there were neither gas lights nor electric lights at that early era, there were candles to light the homes. Accustomed as Americans of that time were to the nighttime hours, they had never seen a night so utterly black as this. Those who, for one reason and another, were out and about on the roads of rural America that unusual night, found themselves confronted by a darkness that was no less remarkable than that of the daytime hours had been. Horses, the primary means of transportation, could not see to put one foot in front of the other, and simply refused to move. At various times that evening after the Moon rose, though invisibly, the sky cleared sufficiently to present the dreadful specter of a blood-red disc rising to the zenith of the heavens. This phenomenon especially was noted after midnight had ushered in the 20th of May. Bloody and round, the Moon at least offered some small hope that the darkened heavens were at last beginning to clear. Gradually stars began to appear, and the next morning the Sun, to the immense relief of all, rose at its accustomed time and
When shown a colour spectrum besides blue and purple, Dalton was only able to recognise one other colour, yellow. Or as he says?that part of the image which others call red appears to me little more than a shade or deflect of light. After that the orange, yellow and green seem one colour which descends pretty uniformly from an intense to a rare yellow, making what I should call different shades of yellow. In 1801 he argued that the atmosphere was filled with mechanical gases and that the chemical reactions between the nitrogen and oxygen played no part in the atmosphere?s construction. To prove this, he conducted a lot of experiments on the solubility of gases in water.
Our Sun continuously converts hydrogen into helium and with this process it provides the essentials for life processes. In doing this it controls “our climate, provides light, raises tides, and drives the food chain” (Schaefer 34). Our Sun also has influenced many beliefs now and in the past. History has documented Sun worshipping religions while many current societies use solar calendars (Schaefer 34).
One Greek myth story based on the stars is The Pleiades. This story is about Atlas’ 7 daughters; Electra, Maia, Taygete, Alcyone, Merope, Celaeno, and Sterope. Orion was always chasing after them and they were always running away. Zeus put them in the stars, in an attempt to save them from Orion, “But it was said that even there orion continued his pursuit , always unsuccessful, yet persistent,” (Mythology 439). This story refers to the origin of a particular constellation. It also explains why the stars move across the sky in a specific direction. Another story that helps explain something in the stars is Callisto. In this tail, Zeus sees a wolf lady and he falls in love with her. Hera gets upset and turns her into a bear so her son will kill her, “But Zeus snatched the bear away and placed her among the stars, where she is called Great Bear,” (Mythology 429). This was also used to explain where the, “Great Bear,” constellation came from. These and many other beautiful constellations with really interesting stories can still be seen
Before discussing the details of how light and heat are produced, the characteristics of sun should be kept in mind. The body of sun consists of hydrogen at high temperatures which can cause nuclear fusion. The process of fusion requires two atoms of hydrogen to fuse their nuclei and as a result significant amount of energy is released in the form of light and heat that travels all the way from sun to earth.
Light is what lets you experience colour. The pigment of the retina in your eyes is sensitive to different lengths of light waves which allows you to see different colours. The wavelengths of light that humans can see are called the visible colour spectrum.
The blue color, which is observed in the sky, is due to the Rayleigh scattering. As light travels in the atmosphere, it comes across gas molecules which absorb most of the colors with shorter wavelength. Colors such as red, orange, yellow are least absorbed. Blue, being a color with short wavelength, gets absorbed in the molecule. It is then radiated into all directions. Now, this is the color that reaches our eyes because it gets scattered in all directions, hence a blue sky.
The history of lighting is a very long story dating back before the discovery of fire to the casting of shadows on walls. Lighting like people has both a past, present, and future, that is where our story begins.