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"Linus Pauling, Crusading Scientist." 1977. Produced for NOVA by Robert Richter/WGBH-Boston. Pauling's Early Start in Chemistry. (2:08)

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Linus Pauling: I can remember being interested in burning glasses, magnifying glass. In the small town in eastern Oregon where I was as a small boy there was a movie, a motion picture place, for a short while, at any rate, and the projector had large six-inch diameter lenses. Once one of these broke and was thrown out so that I had a half of the large lens. As I recall, I only had half of it but it was enough, of course, to focus the sun's rays very well, work as a burning glass. I, I was interested in that. But I didn't have any deep thought about it. A story that, an episode that I remember, that is perhaps the one you are referring to is this. One day in Portland I was walking along the street in the rain carrying an umbrella. The street lights were arcs, an arc lamp, which means a very fine source, a quarter-inch in diameter, perhaps a little larger of bright light. And with the umbrella in front of me I could see the street light through the fabric and not only could I see the light itself but there was a spectrum on each side and above and below, four of them, and then four more spread out more at 45-degree angles in between these. And this phenomenon really did interest me. It was some years before I found the explanation and of course I learned about diffraction of light by a crossed-grating later on and realized that that explained my observation.

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Date: 1977
Genre: sound
ID: 1977v.66
Copyright: More Information

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