Tyndall’s Historical
Experiment
Instruction Manual
Model Number:
IF 514
I
ndustrIal
F
Iber
O
ptIcs
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Copyright © 2008
Previous printings 2002
by Industrial Fiber Optics
Revision - B
Printed in the United States of America
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JoHN TyNdall
(1820 - 1893) Irish
Physicist, Naturalist and Educator
The story of John Tyndall is one of courage, passion and
idealism. It is the story of the highest personal success
achieved by almost any man of humble beginnings in his
time.
When Tyndall was born in 1820 his family was virtually
unknown outside its small village of Leighlinbridge in
Ireland’s second-smallest county.
Seventy-three years later when he died of an accidental
overdose of medicine. Tyndall had won worldwide ac-
claim as a scientist, embracer of controversy, education
proponent and mountaineering pioneer.
John Tyndall
His original researches and his work with top scientists of his era opened up new fields of
science and laid the groundwork for future scientific endeavour.
Tyndall’s major scientific contributions were in physical chemistry. He is the founder of the
science of light scattering (nephelometry). His instruments are the basis of many instru-
ments such as fluorimeters, turbimeters and ultraviolet spectrometers. His major research
was done with the transmission and absorption of gases, liquids and vapors, and he laid the
basis for infrared spectroscopy.
Tyndall is also credited with the first atmospheric pollution measurements using infrared
and scattering measurement instruments to monitor London’s atmosphere.
He showed that ozone, the upper layer of atmosphere so vital to life on Earth, was an
oxygen cluster rather than a hydrogen compound.
He observed perhaps the first controlled photochemical reaction and made important
contributions to thermodynamics. Tyndall was the inventor of the fireman’s respirator and
made other less well known inventions, including improved fog horns.
One of his most important inventions, the light pipe, led to the development of fiber
optics, a technology now playing an increasing role in telecommunications, electronics and
medicine. The modern light pipe instrument is known as the gastroscope, which enables
internal observation of a patient’s stomach without surgery.
Tyndall made negative radiation studies of the moon and predicted the blackness of space
as well as working on solar chemistry, which today has solar energy ramifications.
Science and society owe a tremendous debt to John Tyndall, for he furthered the cause of
knowledge and improved our quality of life.
–1–
Tyndall also made major contributions to the study of evolution through his work on
absorption of heat in the atmosphere and by his introduction of thermodynamics to the
evolution debate. His contribution to physics was considerable, delving into magnetism,
electricity, molecular physics, optics, sound, the properties of materials, diamagnetism and
heat.
He initiated the practical teaching of scientific subjects in our schools. His lectures, liberally
illustrated by exciting experiments, brought science to people in a way that made it truly
popular. An exceptional educationalist, he strongly influenced the direction of university
and school physics teaching.
Among his friends he numbered 19th century giants in the world of science and literature
- Louis Pasteur, James Faraday, Charles Lister, Thomas Huxley, Leslie Stephens, Thomas
Carlyle and Alfred Lord Tennyson. Tyndall’s social life was as varied as his scientific and
mountaineering exploits and he was a much sought-after guest in London’s high society.
A man who was shaped by the luminaries of his generation he came to shape a generation
himself.
Tyndall traveled extensively in Europe, mostly among his beloved mountains, and on a
major lecture tour of America. He did more than most to popularize and make respectable
the sport of mountaineering. He was first to climb the Weisshorn (14,804 ft.) and would
have been the first to climb the Matterhorn, but his guides refused to venture upon the last
peak in 1862. But the next-to-last peak and the ridge which stretches from it to the final
peak were named after him, and he did become the first person to traverse the mountain
from the Italian to the Swiss side in 1868. He also climbed the highest Alpine peak, Mont
Blanc (15,781 ft.), several times. He pioneered solo ascents.
A disciple and successor of Faraday as director of the prestigious Royal Institution of London
and a close associate of Darwin and Huxley, Tyndall was a bold and original thinker in his
own right. He established new doctrines upon which modern science is based, overcoming
scientific controversies that were rampant in the middle and late 19th century.
His bid to win official recognition of the value of science and to professionalize it led him
to form the exclusive X-club which became a major pressure group to wrest scientific
authority from traditionalist mathematical scientists and to transfer it to evolutionists such
as himself.
As a physicist, his work was brilliant and many-faceted. As an educator and lecturer he
became one of the ablest popularists of science of his generation, and a pioneer of practical
teaching. As a mountaineer he was in the vanguard of those who conquered age-old peaks
and age old-fears. As a controversialist he steeped himself in the burning religious and
political issues of the day.
At his death, many monuments had already been erected to him and landmarks named
after him, and others were to follow. Scientific terms such as tyndallization - a sterilization
process still favored in Europe – and Tyndall blue and the Tyndall cone are also permanent
monuments to his work.
–2–
TyNdall’s lIgHT-guIdINg ExPErIMENT
Long before the laser was invented, scientists tried to figure out how to make light go
around corners or between places that could not be connected by a straight line. They tried
many different devices like mirrors and special tubes, but none received much attention
until John Tyndall came along.
In 1870, before members of the prestigious British Royal Society, Tyndall demonstrated
how to guide a light beam through a falling stream of water. His method is shown in Figure
1. The tank of water had a horizontal pipe extending out one side which allowed water
to flow out in an arc to a collection pan on
the floor. A bright light was directed into
the pipe and the light rays traveled within
the water until they were broken up by the
turbulence of the water hitting the collec-
tion pan.
Tyndall knew light was trapped temporarily
inside the stream of water, but he couldn’t
explain why. Today, using a combination
of mathematics and science, the explana-
tion is very straightforward. Tyndall’s 1870
experiment demonstrated the principle
known as “total internal reflection.” Simply
stated: Total internal reflection is a special
optical condition in which optical rays can-
not escape the material in which they are
traveling.
John Tyndall’s work is significant today
because it is the first recorded conformation
of the scientific principle which forms the
basis of all modern fiber optic telephone
Figure 1:
communication networks.
John Tyndall’s “light guiding” experiment
(recreation from daniel Colladon, “la Fon-
taine Colladon,” la Nature 2nd half year
1884, p. 325).
–3–
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