Physicist Wood Robert and his experiments

Robert Wood Johnson is a great specialist in the organization and setting of scientific experiments. This famous American physicist was mainly working with optics. However, he conducted many interesting experiments in other areas of scientific knowledge. Contemporaries of Robert Wood called him "the father of the experiment."

early years

Wood Robert was born on May 2, 1868 in the provincial American town of Concord. At the age of 12 he was enrolled in the Rockbury School, which at that time was considered one of the most prestigious in the country. Here, in-depth study of Latin. Then I went to the classical school in Boston. At the end of the school successfully passed the entrance examination at Harvard.

It is noteworthy that Wood Robert began to organize original tricks from early childhood. Conducting time with peers in the yard seemed to the gifted child to be too boring. Ordinary children's toys he replaced the clever technique from the plant of blowers, located near Boston, to which the boy's father was related. At the age of 10, Robert was given the right not only to walk freely in the production halls, but also to study the principles of the operation of industrial apparatuses. Objects of his interest were casting molds, hydraulic presses, various machine tools for processing parts.

As a child, Wood Robert regularly set about burning in the course of his experiments. Already in adolescence, he gained a reputation as a dangerous person who enjoys working with explosives. Later, the experience of Wood, accumulated by him in his childhood, had a benefit for the New York police. The investigators repeatedly turned to Robert for help with the examination of explosives, which were used by criminals.

Surprisingly, the teachers rated Robert Wood as an ordinary hooligan and even considered him a stupid. And this is not surprising, because from the Rocky School he was expelled for developing mechanisms for driving along the rails of spiral staircases installed in the building. Unpleasant incidents also accompanied his training at Harvard. Here, Wood Robert was even more interested in working with explosives. In chemistry lessons, he managed to safely connect substances that scientists had previously considered incompatible. His boyfriend has repeatedly used his unique chemical recipes to organize small explosions in order to disrupt his studies.

Work for the army

With the outbreak of World War I, the American army was seriously interested in Robert Wood. The experiments of the scientist were to benefit the soldiers who were at the front.

Cooperating with the army command, Wood Robert suggested using one of the military campaigns in France, gas brombenzyl. His couples were to completely neutralize the enemy, actively advancing throughout the Western Front. According to the scientist's assurances, everything that the Allied subdivisions will have to do after this is taken prisoner by the Germans, disoriented by the tear gas. However, the French abandoned the idea. A few months later, the Allied army paid for its decision, when the Germans themselves attacked the enemy with toxic chlorine.

Wood Robert was the author of a signal telescope, which allowed for a considerable distance to pump military balloons with hot air. Later, the scientist managed to convince the British command to allocate funds for the organization of a project for the training of seals, which were supposed to detect enemy submarines. As the practice showed, the animals did a pretty bad job, because they were often distracted by the pursuit of fish schools. However, the experiment made it possible to find out that seals perfectly distinguish the most silent, distant sounds under water. The results of the experiment created a basis for the modernization of hydrophones - the devices by which the noise of the propellers of the submarines was identified. For such an original contribution to the military business, Robert received the rank of major, despite his status as a purely civilian scientist.

Scientific discoveries

Robert Wood is a physicist who is famous for his scientific discoveries and achievements:

• Investigated optical resonance;
• Constructed a telescope in which he used parabolic rotating mirrors from mercury, proved the advantages of the invention;
• Made an opaque light filter that passed the ultraviolet rays;
• For the first time in history, he performed clear pictures of the moon in the ultraviolet spectrum;
• Improved the diffraction grating;
• Developed mechanisms for performing photography in the infrared spectrum;
• He investigated how oscillations that occur with ultrasound affect solids and liquid substances.

Writing Activities

In 1914, Robert Wood addressed his comrade, the author of thrilling thrillers, writer Arthur Tran with a proposal for joint creativity. Soon the friends wrote The Man Who Rocked the Earth ("The Man Who Shook the Earth"). The work for which Robert developed the storyline and described the pseudoscientific events was ready in a few weeks. The book was accepted for publication in 1915. Soon the comrades wrote a sequel, where Wood inserted a series of photographs supposedly performed from the surface of the Moon.

Robert Wood: experiments with infrasound

Once, when staging a play in a London theater, one of the directors turned to Robert Wood for help. The author of the performance needed to create effects that would cause the viewer an inexplicable sense of anxiety. A well-known scientist suggested that the director use rumbling, extremely low sounds. For this purpose, a special tube was constructed which joined the organ and produced oscillations indistinguishable to the human organs of hearing.

Already the first rehearsal delighted everyone. The instrument did not make any sound. However, during the pressure on the keys of the organ in the hall, the walls began to tremble, the chimes of the chandeliers and chandeliers were felt. It is noteworthy that not only the spectators who were in the hall during the performance experienced inexplicable anxiety, but also people living in the neighborhood with the theater.

Later, in numerous experiments, Robert Wood proved that infrasounds produce strong winds, thunderstorms, earthquakes. In the industry, they are being produced by slow-running machines, factory fans, air compressors.

Finally

As you can see, Robert Wood was a rather ambiguous figure in the scientific community. During his life he did not defend a single dissertation, because it seemed to the researcher to be too boring and useless. Despite this, Wood had the status of honorary doctor of a wide range of universities, and also was a member of authoritative scientific societies, repeatedly awarded prestigious awards for his contribution to the development of science.