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Physics in the Arts
Third Edition

P.U.P.A Gilbert
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Introduction

Light and sound

Light and sound make it possible to see and hear the natural world, communicate with one another, and
create and appreciate art. A deep, yet accessible, analysis of the physics of light and sound, and how
our eyes and ears detect and interpret light and sound, is not only intellectually enjoyable, but also
useful to understand and appreciate the world in which we live, all the phenomena occurring around
usdin short, how we interface with our planet, its inhabitants, and their creations. Understanding the
physics of light and sound may also increase the appreciation for works of art and stimulate the artists
among the readers to deepen their knowledge of their media, of how people interface with them, and
perhaps inspire new ideas.

xi
xii Introduction

A unique take on color and music

Curiosity and two decades of in-depth research made it possible for me to present color in this book as
a unique, quantitative physical parameter. This new color description works. It enables mixing of
colored lights and colored paints, termed additive and subtractive color mixing, to be done quanti-
tatively, and shows how to predict the color resulting from the mixture of two colored lights or paints.
The other innovations in this book, compared to any other, is my precise correlation of the physics
and physiology involved in seeing and hearing. Eyes and ears transmit to the brain sequences of nerve
pulses that encode color and music. Specifically, I quantitatively describe the physical stimulus, the
signals the retina or the cochlea send to the brain, the precise encoding of these signals, and how the
brain interprets the code as hue, saturation, and brightness of a color, or pitch, loudness, and timbre of
sounds.
The rest of the book is more conventional, but greatly livened by the many figures I mostly pro-
duced myself, or occasionally reproduced, where acknowledged in figure captions. Besides the
aforementioned color, color vision and sound hearing, the book includes reflection and refraction,
lenses and photography, structural color, harmonic motion, damping, resonance, strings and pipes and
their standing wave modes, and how musical instruments work. In a nutshell, the book is about the
physics of light and sound, both of which are wave phenomena. They involve very different kinds of
waves, mechanical and electromagnetic, longitudinal and transverse, but they both oscillate in space
and time.

Light and sound analogies

Newton first coined the word spectrum of visible light, and then subdivided it into seven colors. He
chose the number seven by analogy with the seven notes of the musical scale.
The difference between a viola, a piano, and a trombone playing the same note is called tone color:
Yet another analogy, this time in music borrowed from light.
The electromagnetic spectrum extends from gamma rays to radio waves, with frequency varying
by 30 orders of magnitude, or doubling 100 times (2100 ¼ 1030). A musical octave halved or doubles
the frequency of sound. In the entire visible range, from red to violet, the frequency merely doubles.
Thus, we see one octave of the huge electromagnetic piano keyboard with 100 octaves! Yet, so much
happens in this narrow region because radiation of these energies strongly interacting with electrons
generates non-flat, interesting absorption spectra, which in turn generate the two million colors we
see.
The frequency range for audible sound is 20e20,000 Hertz. Compared to light, we hear as sound a
much larger region of the possible frequencies. Higher frequencies, or ultrasounds, are used for
medical imaging (10 MHz) and for communication by dolphins (up to 160 kHz), and bats (up to
200 kHz). Lower frequencies, or infrasound, are produced by earthquakes, avalanches, volcanoes,
nuclear tests, and even elephants (15 Hz)dfor communicating with other elephants within a 10 km
distance.
 Introduction xiii

The purpose of this book

The goal of this book is not to tidy up art, rationalize it, and explain it in scientific terms. Other
excellent authors did that, as shown in the figures on this page. My goal is to add another
componentdphysicsdto the enjoyment of art. Understanding the form and function of musical in-
struments adds to the music. Similarly, understanding color and color mixing expands the palette of
visual artists and the intellectual enjoyment of people looking at their art.

Tidying up art by Ursus Wehrli (Swiss, b. 1969). Left: The bedroom by Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853e90),
1888 (oil on canvas) © van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands/The Bridgeman Art Library
Nationality/copyright status: Dutch/out of copyright. Right: Tidying up Van Gogh’s Bedroom at Arles by Ursus
Wehrli. Copyright © Ursus Wehrli.
From: Ursus Wehrli, Kunst aufräumen. Copyright © 2002 KEIN & ABER AG, Zürich.

Teacher and Student Resources

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site for more details: https://www.elsevier.com/books-and-journals/book-companion/9780128243473
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Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Willy Haeberli for introducing me to physics in the arts and the joy of teaching it, for
agreeing to coauthor the previous two editions of this book, and for his constant friendship for the last
20 years. I am especially grateful for his reading of the new chapters on sound, and the improvements
he suggested.
I thank Brian Rebel and Justin Balantekin for their edits to the sound and light chapters, respec-
tively, and Michael J. Cervia for plotting many of the sine figures.
I am grateful to many artists who kindly allowed me to present their masterpieces. These include
Michele Pred, Ana MacArthur, Jennifer Tallerico, Richard Goodkin, John Christensen, Haris Mahic,
Andrée Valley, and Jillian F. Banfield.
I thank Ralph Rabin Violin in Madison WI, and Rafael at Ifshin Violins in El Cerrito CA for gener-
ously sharing their expertise on violin making and playing, and Russell Kassman, Purveyor of Fine
Pianos in Berkeley, CA, for generously letting me photograph his pianos.
I appreciate Richard J. “Dick” Loveless for letting me take data on his color blindness glasses.
I thank Ben Gilbert for his kindness, feisty disagreements, and love.

xiv
 CHAPTER

Light and light waves

1

Icelandic legends and aurora by Elizabeth M. Ryan, 2015. This photo of the northern lights, or aurora borealis,
was taken in Vik, Iceland.
Photo downloaded from https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap151208.html

Abstract
You can see light, with its colors, intensity, reflection, refraction, focusing, and its characteristic of
traveling along a straight line in a homogenous material; but you probably have no intuition for the
physical nature of light, what it is made of, and how it works. In this chapter you will learn that light
behaves as both particles, called photons, and waves, and that light travels fastest in a vacuum and more
slowly in denser materials; that the electromagnetic spectrum extends well beyond the visible light, from
gamma rays to radio waves; that light can be unpolarized, like sunlight, or polarized, like light scattered by
the sky or reflected by glass or water surfaces.

Chapter outline
1.1 Dual nature of light...........................................................................................................................2
1.2 Speed of light ..................................................................................................................................4
1.3 Electromagnetic spectrum.................................................................................................................6
1.4 Polarization .....................................................................................................................................8
1.5 Polarizers ......................................................................................................................................10
1.6 Large and small numbers ................................................................................................................13

Physics in the Arts. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-824347-3.00001-7

Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
1
2 Chapter 1 Light and light waves

1.1 Dual nature of light

What is light? This question was hotly debated for centuries. Up until the 1600s, everyone thought that
light behaved as particles, bouncing off surfaces like billiard balls. Then, in the 1600s, competing
theories of light were proposed by Christiaan Huygens who maintained that light behaved as waves,
and Isaac Newton, who countered that it behaved as particles. The debate continued, until finally in the
1900s it was agreed that light particlesdcalled photonsdsometimes behave similarly to particles,
other times more as waves. In all cases, a photon is both a particle and a wave at the same time. This
behavior is termed the dual nature of light. In some experiments, photons may behave preferentially
as one or the other, but they are always both, particles and waves, and the dual particle-like and wave-
like natures are not contradictory. In case you are curious, photons behave as waves in all experiments
involving interference, diffraction, reflection, and refraction. They behave as particles in Einstein’s
photoelectric effect, Planck’s thermal radiation, and Compton’s scattering. Photons are not unique in
their duality, all subatomic particles exhibit wave-particle duality, which is one of the key concepts
in quantum mechanics.
If you have ever stood in shallow sea water, you’ve probably noticed that you could not stop the
waves with your body. The waves just go around you. This phenomenon is called diffraction, and it
lets waves go around obstacles almost undisturbed. Waves also go through a small opening and diverge
from there, as shown in Fig. 1.1. Also, when the wakes from two boats combine, standing waves may
form. On the water surface, where both wake waves have a crest, a stationary double-height crest
results, but where both have troughs, there is a stationary doubly deep trough. In places where one
wake wave has a crest and the other has a trough, however, the water surface is flat, as the waves

FIGURE 1.1
Schematic representation of waves on a water surface, seen from above. Red lines indicate crests; black lines
troughs. At the bottom of the diagram is a plane wave, in which crests and troughs are aligned along straight
lines and propagate up from the bottom of the schematic. When the plane wave reaches a wall with an
aperture, it propagates into and after the aperture as a circular wave, centered at the aperture. Light blue
arrows indicate the directions of propagation of the wave.
 1.1 Dual nature of light 3

cancel. This phenomenon is called interference. Constructive interference generates doubly intense
crests or troughs; destructive interference cancels a trough with a crest. If you consider two apertures,
producing two sets of circular waves, you see a similar interference effect. In Fig. 1.2, troughs and
crests are represented by black and red lines, respectively. Where two crest lines from two apertures
interfere constructively a red dot indicates that a double crest results, similarly black dots indicated
double troughs, whereas where one crest line interferes with a trough line a white dot indicates that the
two waves cancel.
In a famous experiment done by Thomas Young in 1803, a very similar interference phenomenon
takes place, using light instead of waves on the surface of water and two light beams. Young’s ex-
periments proved for the first time that light is composed of waves. In his experiment, a beam of red
light was obtained from sunlight through a pinhole and a red filter, and projected into a darkened room.
The red beam was split into two light beams by a playing card held into the beam edgewise as shown in
Fig. 1.3. The two beams interfered constructively and destructively, as in Fig. 1.2, and generated the
pattern shown in Fig. 1.3.
Later, Young repeated the experiment using two slits, and obtained similar results. You can easily
do the experiment of Fig. 1.3 using a laser pointer and a card in a dark room. You can also use sunlight
through a small hole if you wish, but you must use a colored filter, because light of only one color, that
is, one wavelength, must be used to see the interference fringes. There is no conceivable way that
would make particles accumulate more in certain spots and less in others to generate the interference
pattern of Fig. 1.3. Young’s experiment, therefore, proves that light indeed behaves as waves.

FIGURE 1.2
Schematic representation of the same wave going through two apertures and interfering. Where two red lines
cross, crests of double height are formed (red dots), where two black lines cross, troughs of double depth are
formed (black dots). These are both locations of constructive interference. Where a black line crosses a red
line, destructive interference makes the waves cancel each other, and the water surface is flat (white dots).
4 Chapter 1 Light and light waves

FIGURE 1.3
Young’s experiment demonstrating the wave nature of light. Left: A beam of sun light goes through a pinhole
and a red filter and is then split by a playing card held edgewise. The resulting two red beams interfere with
one another after the card, and create the pattern shown on the right.

In this and all other experiments in which light is better interpreted as waves, there is a similarity
between light and the crests and troughs of waves on the surface of water, or waves traveling along
strings. In light, what oscillates are the electric and magnetic fields. They both oscillate in the plane
perpendicular to the travel direction. You are familiar with these fields. The magnetic field is what
makes a magnet attract a piece of iron, and the electric field is responsible for the attraction of hair to a
static blanket.
As these fields oscillate there is an alternation of places with a strong upward, zero, and downward
electric field. The pattern is similar to the one you see for waves on water: Light moves with a speed v,
and, like all other waves, it has an amplitude, a frequency, and a wavelength. Fig. 1.4 graphically shows
these quantities in a wave.
The wavelength l is different for different colors. For example, blue light has a shorter wavelength
than red light, as shown in Fig. 1.5.

1.2 Speed of light

The speed of light depends on the material through which light travels. The speed of light in vacuum
c, from the Latin word celeritas, is c [ 299,762,458 m/s, rounded to 3 3 108 m/s. This is a huge
speed. By comparison, a car traveling at 200 km/h ¼ 125 mph ¼ 55 m/s, sound in air travels at 344 m/
s, and a rocket leaving Earth travels at 10,000 m/s.
In transparent materials other than vacuum, such as water, glass, plexiglass, acrylic, oil, ice, or
diamond, the speed of light v is smaller than its speed in vacuum c. The actual value of v depends on
 1.2 Speed of light 5

FIGURE 1.4
Light wave oscillating in space as it travels. The half-height is called amplitude, the distance between
subsequent crests is the wavelength indicated by the Greek letter l (lambda), and the frequency is the
number of oscillations in 1 s.

FIGURE 1.5
Two light waves, one of blue light and one of red light, oscillating as they travel. The amplitude is the same for
both waves, but the wavelength for the blue light is shorter than for the red light.

the material. The speed of light v (for velocity) in a material depends on the index of refraction n of
the material and can be found using the following equation:
c
vlight in material ¼
n
The denser the material, the larger its index of refraction and the slower light travels through it. For
example: the index of refraction of plexiglass is nplexiglass ¼ 1.5, so the speed of light in plexiglass is
c 3  108 m=s
vlight in plexiglass ¼ ¼ ¼ 2  108 m=s
nplexiglass 1:5
The index of refraction of vacuum is nvacuum ¼ 1, the smallest index of refraction that exists.
Therefore, light travels fastest in vacuum. The index of refraction of air is just over 1, so in this book it
6 Chapter 1 Light and light waves

is always rounded up to 1. Here is an interesting effect: Imagine a transparent object with n > 1
surrounded by vacuum. When light traveling in vacuum traverses the transparent object, it slows down,
and then it instantaneously accelerates again when exiting the object, without changing its energy.
When other particles travel in a material faster than light travels in that same material, the so-called
Cherenkov radiation is emitted by the particles. Figs. 1.6 and 1.7 show the beautiful blue glow of
Cherenkov radiation observed in water and ice.

1.3 Electromagnetic spectrum

Electromagnetic waves can have a large range of frequencies or wavelengths. What you call light is the
narrow range of wavelengths that can be detected by our eye: 400 nm to 700 nm, where
1 nm ¼ 1 nanometer ¼ 1  109 m, which is one billionth of a meter. The range of wavelengths
400e700 nm is called visible light, and abbreviated VIS.
Electromagnetic waves with large wavelengths (l ¼ 300 m) are called radio waves and are
received by radios. Waves with shorter and shorter wavelengths are called ultraviolet light (UV),

FIGURE 1.6
Cherenkov radiation at the UW-Madison Nuclear Reactor. Uranium-235 is the fuel. As uranium nuclei
undergo fission, gamma ray photons are produced, which hit electrons in the water surrounding the uranium
core, and accelerate the electrons to a speed greater than the speed of light in water, thus Cherenkov radiation
is emitted, which is a beautiful blue glow visible by naked eye, and captured in this photograph.
Photo courtesy of Robert Agasie and Michael Corradini.
 1.3 Electromagnetic spectrum 7

FIGURE 1.7
Cherenkov radiation in ice, captured by the IceCube neutrino detector at the South Pole. The aptly named
detector is basically a three-dimensional “camera” in which each pixel is acquired by a photomultiplier, a very
sensitive visible light detector. Vertical strings of photomultipliers are installed in the entire volume of a 1  1 
1 km cube of natural ice. When a high-energy neutrino interacts within the volume of IceCube, a muon and a
cascade of other charged particles are generated, which travel faster than light in ice, thus Cherenkov
radiation is emitted. In this schematic Cherenkov radiation detected by each photomultiplier is shown as a
green or yellow ball, the direction of the outgoing muon is a red arrow, and its Cherenkov radiation wake is a
glow of blue light.
Image courtesy of Francis Halzen and Albrecht Karle.

X-rays, and gamma rays. Fig. 1.8 shows energy, frequency, wavelength, and the common names for the
entire electromagnetic spectrum.
Table 1.1 shows the wavelengths corresponding to the seven colors commonly associated with the
visible range. These are the colors dispersed by a prism, as shown for the first time by Isaac Newton.
There is an infinite of wavelengths in the spectrum, and the human eye can see up to two million colors,
but Newton, by analogy with the seven notes of a musical scale, arbitrarily subdivided the spectrum
into seven colors. In English, those in Table 1.1 are the most commonly used color names, and this is
why it is useful for you to identify them by their approximate wavelengths.
In reality the spectrum is a continuum, and a range of wavelengths is associated with each of these
colors, with no sharp separation between red and orange, or any other two adjacent colors. The colors
vary continuously, as shown in Fig. 1.9. Some colorsdfor example, cyan, approximately between 480
8 Chapter 1 Light and light waves

FIGURE 1.8
The full extent of the electromagnetic spectrum, including Gamma rays, X-rays, ultraviolet (UV), visible (VIS),
infrared (IR), microwaves, and radio waves. For each of these ranges the numeric values for wavelengths,
frequencies, and energies are provided. Notice how narrow the VIS is, compared to the full spectrum. The
highest energy Gamma rays observed thus far in the universe are 1018 eV.

Table 1.1 Color names and the

corresponding wavelength
ranges. The separations between
color ranges are not sharp, thus
these ranges are approximate.
Color name Wavelength range
violet 400–430 nm

blue 430–480 nm

cyan 480–500 nm

green 500–570 nm

yellow 570–585 nm

orange 585–620 nm

red 620–700 nm

and 500 nmddo not normally appear in the spoken language spectrum, but they are clearly visible
when one looks at the continuous spectrum dispersed by a prism.

1.4 Polarization
There is one more phenomenon that can only be explained by taking into account the wave nature of
light. When light propagates in one direction, the electric and magnetic fields oscillate in a second and
 1.4 Polarization 9

FIGURE 1.9
The spectral colors and their wavelengths, as dispersed by a prism. Notice that the index of refraction of the
prism is slightly greater for violet than it is for red, thus violet is kinked more than red at the first refraction, and
again at the second refraction. This effect is called dispersion of the prism, and it results in dispersed colors.
Wavelengths smaller than 400 nm are called ultraviolet (UV) and greater than 700 nm infrared (IR). These are
both invisible to humans.

FIGURE 1.10
Unpolarized light has the electric field oscillating in all directions perpendicular to the direction of propagation.
When unpolarized light is reflected by a horizontal surface of water or glass it becomes polarized, horizontally
polarized.

third direction, all three directions perpendicular to each other. The plane in which the electric field
oscillates, which also contains the direction of propagation, is called the plane of polarization. See
Figs. 1.10 and 1.11, the latter in particular shows you how the direction of propagation is contained in
the plane of polarization. For a simple example, imagine a rope fixed at one end and being moved at the
other end. If the free end of the rope is moved up and down periodically, the crests and troughs that
form on the rope are vertically above and below the position of the undisturbed string. You can say that
the waves on this rope are vertically polarized. If the free end of the string is moved horizontally, left
to right, the waves are horizontally polarized.
To produce an electromagnetic wave, an electric charge is moved up and down, for example, along
a conductor called an antenna. This generates vertically polarized electromagnetic radio waves,
10 Chapter 1 Light and light waves

FIGURE 1.11
Polarized sunglasses are always built so that their lenses absorb horizonatally polarized light, that is, light with
the electric field E oscillating horizontally, shown in red, reflected by horizontal surfaces (water, car tops,
floors, roads, etc.), and light polarized in all other directions, or unpolarized, is transmitted. Polarized
sunglasses do not stop the glare from windows, as this is vertically polarized, shown in blue.

irradiating in all horizontal directions away from the vertical antenna and thus transmitting radio
waves. Besides a rigid antenna, the electric charge may also be moved along an electric wire, or in
vacuum using magnetic fields.
Light from the sun or a light bulb, however, is composed of waves with planes of polarization in
many different and random directions. This is called unpolarized light.
Sunlight is unpolarized. It contains electric fields oscillating in all directions. When unpolarized
light is reflected by a horizontal surface, such as a mirror, water surface, car top, or road, the
reflected light is horizontally polarized, as shown in Fig. 1.10.
At a specific incidence and reflection angle, called the Brewster’s angle, 100% of the reflected
light is polarized. In other words, if light strikes the surface of a horizontal material at the Brewster’s
angle, the reflected light is completely horizontally polarized. For water the Brewster’s angle is 53
degrees, for glass it is 56 degrees, and for diamond 67.5 degrees. At incidence angles that are larger or
smaller, part of the light is also vertically polarized, so the degree of horizontal polarization is less than
100%. Fig. 1.12 shows the Brewster’s angle for glass.

1.5 Polarizers
Polaroid filters, also called polarizing filters or simply polarizers, absorb light polarized in one
specific direction and transmit the rest. These filters are prepared, for example, by depositing needle-
shaped iodine crystals onto a polymer surface, which is then stretched so that the needles
orient themselves along the direction of stretching, causing them to absorb light polarized in that
direction only.
Sunglasses with polarizer lenses have the needle crystals oriented horizontally, and they absorb
horizontally polarized light (Fig. 1.11). Vertically polarized light is still transmitted. If you combine
two Polaroid filters at 90 degrees from each other, no light is transmitted.
 1.5 Polarizers 11

FIGURE 1.12
The same desk light reflected by a pane of glass surface, and photographed at the Brewster’s angle for glass,
incidence angle ¼ reflection angle ¼ 56 degrees, through a linear polarizer, mounted vertically on the left,
and horizontally on the right. At the Brewster’s angle 100% of the light reflected by the glass pane is
horizontally polarized, thus a horizontal polarizer removes it completely (right, see arrow). With the polarizer
vertical (left, see arrow), or with no polarizer at all, the reflection is perfectly visible. Notice that only the
reflected polarized light is removed, the refracted light that goes through the glass and is seen at the front edge
of the glass pane is identical in the two photos.

Light striking a horizontal glass surface at the Brewster’s angle is completely horizontally polar-
ized, and therefore completely removed by a polarizer placed in front of a camera lens, as shown in
Fig. 1.12.
A polarizer darkens clouds but it darkens the sky even more. This happens because light scattered
by smaller particles is more polarized than light scattered by larger particles. The air molecules in the
sky are smaller than the ice crystals and water droplets in the clouds. Therefore, there is more polarized
light scattered by the sky than by the clouds. Correspondingly, the polarizer filter removes more light
from the sky, and the contrast between the clouds and the sky is enhanced. In other words, the polarizer
makes the clouds pop from the sky background, as shown in Fig. 1.13.
On a bright sunny day polarizer camera filters or sunglasses deepen the blue of the sky
(Fig. 1.14), and remove reflections from water surfaces (Fig. 1.15), so you can see deep into the water.
Light scattered by snow, or reflected by windows is polarized, thus polarizers absorb and remove that
glare. Light scattered by air molecules in the sky is most polarized at 90 degrees from the sun. At 0 or
12 Chapter 1 Light and light waves

FIGURE 1.13
Photographs without (left) and with (right) polarizer filter of the same clouds. Notice how the contrast cloud-
sky is enhanced by the polarizer.
Photographs are courtesy of Tiziana Parasassi.

FIGURE 1.14
Clouds and buildings in Barcelona, Spain. Both photos are taken at 90 degrees from the sun, where light from
the sky is most polarized, using a circular polarizer, which includes a rotatable linear polarizer, used at the
angles to maximize (left) or minimize (right) the brightness of the sky.
Photographs are courtesy of John N. Christensen.
 1.6 Large and small numbers 13

FIGURE 1.15
Mating salamanders by John N. Christensen. The glare from the surface of water (left) is removed by a circular
polarizer (right). The image of white clouds in the sky reflected by the water surface is horizontally polarized,
and thus removed by a horizontal polarizer. Arrows indicate the direction of the polarizer.

180 degrees, that is, with the sun directly in front of you or behind you, the light from the sky is
completely unpolarized, thus polarized sunglasses or camera polarizer filters are ineffective at these
angles.

1.6 Large and small numbers

It is convenient to express large and small numbers by the use of prefixes. Some of these you already
encountered, such as nanometers (nm) for visible light wavelengths. Look at Table 22.7 for the most
common prefixes and some more examples.
 CHAPTER

Reflection and refraction

2

Breaking the glass ceiling by Michele Pred, 2007.

Photo downloaded from michelepred.com.

Abstract
In this chapter you will learn the difference between scattered and reflected light, how mirrors form virtual
images, and that mirrors do not invert left and right. Then you will learn the index of refraction and Snell’s
law, which tells you precisely how much light rays are kinked at the interface of two materials. With the
notable exception of oil and ethanol, denser materials generally have higher indices of refraction, so light
rays are kinked toward or away from the normal when they travel from a less dense into a denser material
or vice versa. Starting from the denser material, if the angle of incidence is greater than the critical angle,
then light will not be refracted but totally internally reflected. Refraction and reflection explain how
primary and secondary rainbows are formed, and why the band of sky between them is darker. Total
internal reflection makes hair or sand darker when wet. A combination of refraction and total internal
reflection is why diamonds for jewelry are cut with specific, precise shapes that maximize their sparkle.

Chapter outline
2.1 Specular reflection of light .............................................................................................................16
2.2 Refraction of light ..........................................................................................................................19
2.3 Total internal reflection ..................................................................................................................22
2.4 Due to refraction, things are not where they appear .........................................................................25
2.5 Reflection and refraction in diamonds..............................................................................................26
2.6 Rainbows .......................................................................................................................................32

Physics in the Arts. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-824347-3.00002-9

Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
15
16 Chapter 2 Reflection and refraction

2.7 Interesting brightening and darkening effects ..................................................................................37

2.8 Questions.......................................................................................................................................40

2.1 Specular reflection of light

Imagine a mirror surface that is perfectly flat, polished, and reflective. Now imagine a line perpen-
dicular to the mirror surface, called the normal. The normal forms angles of 90 degrees from the
mirror surface. When light illuminates any mirror like the one you imagined, it is reflected.
In Fig. 2.1, the ray of light coming from the left is incident on, that is, hitting the mirror’s surface.
The angle marked a (alpha) is called the angle of incidence, and it is measured from the normal. In the
particular diagram of Fig. 2.1, a ¼ 45 degrees. The incident ray is reflected by the mirror into another
ray. This reflected ray of light forms an angle of reflection, marked b (beta), with respect to the
normal. The angle of incidence is equal to the angle of reflection, or
a ¼ b:
This is called the law of specular reflection, from the Latin word speculum, meaning mirror. The
law of specular reflection is valid for any value of the angle of incidence a, not only for the 45-degree
angle shown in Fig. 2.1. This law is all you need to know about specular reflection.
All polished and smooth surfaces reflect light, just like mirrors. Usually mirrors are made using a
pane of glass, which can easily be made flat and smooth, coated on its back with a reflective metal layer.
All materials reflect light, at least to some extent, provided they have naturally smooth or polished
surfaces, such as apples or lemons, car tops, or any smooth piece of furniture. Even transparent objects
reflect part of the light hitting them. You can see this in everyday life on windowpanes, cell phone screens,
shop windows, water surfaces, etc. The reflectivity of polished surfaces is greater at grazing
incidencedthat is, when the angle of incidence is large, close to 90 degrees. Try this with your cell phone,
when it’s off and has a dark screen. At normal incidence, when you hold the phone vertical in front of your
face you can faintly see the reflection of your face on the glass screen. But at grazing incidence, when you
hold the phone horizontal, you can see the face of a friend next to you much more brightly.

FIGURE 2.1
A ray of light is reflected by a mirror so that the angles of incidence and reflection are equal (a ¼ b).
 2.1 Specular reflection of light 17

FIGURE 2.2
The difference between the way a mirror and a wall reflect light: the mirror does specular reflection, the wall
does diffuse reflection or scattering.

Most objects around us are not perfectly polished, so they are not good specular reflectors. When
nonsmooth objects are illuminated, they do not reflect light according to the law of reflection. Instead,
nonpolished objects diffusely reflect or scatter light in all directions around them, as shown in
Fig. 2.2. This means that you do not have to be in a specific position or at a specific angle to see a
scattering object. You can be at any angle from it and still see it. This is quite convenient!
Every nonpolished, illuminated object can be considered a source of light rays. The sun, incan-
descent lightbulbs, neon lights, fluorescent lights, LED lights, computer monitors, or displays all emit
light, but not many other objects do. Illuminated nonpolished objects, however, can be represented as
sources of light, since they scatter light in all directions. From the geometric point of view, each point
of an object can be schematically represented as a source of light rays, that is, as a center of radiating
light rays. Imagine for example a red laser pointer beam illuminating a spot on a sheet of paper. The red
dot on paper can be seen from everywhere else in the room, not only at a specific angle, as it would on a
mirror. Therefore, light rays diverge from the red dot on paper as if that dot was emitting light. Clearly
the paper does not emit light but only scatters it, as most other objects surrounding us do. The dot on
the paper, however, can be considered as a source of light rays, propagating in all directions.
Imagine now that an object is in front of a mirror. The light rays scattered by every point of the
object diverge from one another as shown for the point O in Fig. 2.3, some of the rays hit the mirror
surface and are reflected by the mirror, each accurately following the law of reflection. The reflected
rays of light behave as if they originated from the point I, which is behind the mirror. This point is
called the virtual image of the object point O. Repeating the same operation for each point of the
object you can find the whole virtual image of the whole object.
The image point I is located behind the plane of the mirror, at a distance h, equal to the distance h
between O and the mirror. Points O and I are on a line perpendicular to the plane of the mirror. The
mirror does not need to be right in front of the object or the observer. A smaller mirror in the right
position to satisfy the law of reflection is sufficient to produce images the desired object. The rear-view
mirrors in a car clearly demonstrate this point. In Fig. 2.3 the mirror only needs to be there where the
rays hit it, not left or right of them. Notice that the distance h must always be mesured perpendicular to
the mirror plane, whether or not the mirror extends to that position.
To find the image position of any object, draw the normal from the object to the mirror plane and
then measure the distance between the object and the mirror. The image is located at the same distance
18 Chapter 2 Reflection and refraction

FIGURE 2.3
How a mirror creates a virtual image. Some of the rays scattered in all directions by an object point O hit the
mirror, are reflected, and keep diverging from one another, as if they were all coming from the image point I
behind the mirror.

from the mirror as the object, but it is on the opposite side. Notice that the real rays are drawn as solid
lines, and the virtual rays, drawn as dashed lines, are only artificial extensions of the real rays, not at
all real themselves. The virtual rays show where the real rays appear to be originating from. Because
only virtual rays cross one another at the point I, I is a virtual image.
Any ray from O that strikes the mirror is reflected, and the artificial extensions of these reflected
rays always seem to come from point I. The eye cannot tell the difference between rays coming from a
virtual image or a real object at the same position. So, if you remove the mirror, place the object point
O at position I, O would look identical to the reflection of O through the mirror.
When you look at yourself in the mirror, what you see is a virtual image of yourself. This virtual
image is behind the mirror. If a friend were to look behind the mirror, however, she would not find an
image of you, because the image is virtual. You can only see a virtual image if you are on the same side
of the mirror as the object.
A vertical mirror may have given you the impression that it inverts left and right, but this is actually
incorrect. The vertical mirror does not invert left to right, right to left, or top to bottom. It only inverts
front and back, as shown in Fig. 2.4. In the mirror on the wall you see the top of your face on top and
your right ear on the right. Neither up-down nor left-right are reversed in the image. The only inverted
direction is front and back. Other people facing you, however, always see your right ear on their left, so
they see you differently from the way you see yourself in the mirror. This is why everybody thinks that
left and right are inverted in a vertical mirror. It’s just your habit of seeing each other frontally. If you
have difficulty believing this, orient a mirror so it faces south. Then look at yourself while you point
with your hand toward east. The virtual image of you also points east. Repeat pointing west, pointing
up, or pointing down, and you will see that none of these directions are inverted. If you point your hand
toward the mirror (north), however, the reflected virtual image points in the opposite direction (south).
 2.2 Refraction of light 19

FIGURE 2.4
The mirror does not invert left-right, as commonly assumed, nor top-bottom, it only inverts the front-back
direction.

2.2 Refraction of light

Light travels along straight lines in a uniform material. If a ray of light passes from one material to
another, for instance from air into water or glass, in a direction that is normal, or perpendicular, to the
interface, the ray will travel in a straight line. However, if a ray travels from one material to another in a
direction different from the normal, the direction of the light ray changes in the second materialdthe
ray is kinked. This abrupt changing of direction of light rays at the interface between two materials is
called refraction. Light rays change direction abruptly at the interface, thus they kink, they do not
change direction gradually, or bend.
How much, precisely, lights rays are kinked, or how slow or fast they travel through a material depends
on the index of refraction of the material n. The index of refraction n is an intrinsic property of each
material. In general, the denser the material, the higher the index of refraction n. Vacuum, and to a good
approximation air, both have an index of refraction n ¼ 1. For water, n ¼ 1.33, and for windowpane
glass n ¼ 1.52. The index of refraction n is a dimensionless numberdit has no units. In most materials, n
is between 1.0 and 2.5. Table 2.1 presents the indices of refraction of common materials.
There are notable exceptions to the rule of thumb that denser materials are more refractive, that is,
have higher indices of refraction. As you can see in Table 2.1, ethyl alcohol, or ethanol, and olive oil
both have indices of refraction greater than water, but they are both less dense than water. As you must
have noticed if you ever mixed oil and water, for example while making a salad dressing, oil floats
on water, which indicates that it definitely has lower density than water. You would therefore
expect its index of refraction to be lower than water’s nwater ¼ 1.33, but it is in fact much higher, with
nolive oil ¼ 1.47. The discussion below will not consider these exceptions, unless otherwise noted, and
treat denser materials as if they had universally greater indices of refraction, as if they were always
more refractive.
20 Chapter 2 Reflection and refraction

Table 2.1 Indices of refraction n for various

materials.
Index of refraction n
at wavelength
l [ 633 nm
center vertically, or in the IR where
horizontally noted

Vacuum 1.00000
Air at 50 C 1.00024
Air at 20 C 1.00027
Air at 5 C 1.00028
Air at 40 C 1.00034
Water at 20 C 1.33
Water at 4 C 1.34
Ice 1.31
Ethanol 1.36
Olive oil 1.47
Plexiglass 1.50
Crown glass 1.5e1.6
Extra-dense flint glass 1.75
Zircon 1.78e1.99
Cubic zirconia 2.15e2.18
Diamond 2.42
Gallium phosphide in the IR 3.2e5.0
Gallium arsenide in the IR 3.52e3.95
Silicon in the IR 3.88e4.01

There is another complication: The index of refraction is not constant for each material but actually
depends slightly on the wavelength of light. This phenomenon is called dispersion of light or simply
dispersion. For example, for borosilicate crown glass, also known as BK7 glass, at the two extremes of
the visible light range, 400 nm to 700 nm, the refractive index is n400 ¼ 1.53 and n700 ¼ 1.51. This may
seem a small difference, but indices of refraction are always small numbers in the visible range,
varying between 1 and 2.42, thus this is a big variation, and makes it possible to disperse the spectral
colors using a crown glass prism, as shown in Fig. 2.5. Dispersion of the spectral colors is used in
modern art to great effect, as shown in Fig. 2.6.
When a light ray travels through the interface between air and a material, where the indices of
refraction are n ¼ 1.0 and n > 1, respectively, as depicted in Fig. 2.7 for the air-water interface.
Whenever light travels from a less dense to a denser material, it kinks toward the normal, when it
travels in the reverse direction from a denser to a less dense material light kinks away from the
normal, as shown in Fig. 2.7.
 2.2 Refraction of light 21

FIGURE 2.5
The spectral colors that overlap in white light are dispersed by a crown glass prism because the indices of
refraction n differ for different wavelengths. At the two extremes n (l ¼ 400 nm, violet) ¼ 1.53 and n
(l ¼ 700 nm, red) ¼ 1.51. Thus, violet and blue are kinked more, and as the wavelength increases the rays
are kinked progressively less. This dispersion happens at the first refraction at the air-prism interface, and
again at the second refraction at the prism-air interface.

FIGURE 2.6
Ignition, Ana MacArthur, 1989. In this installation the holographically imprinted surface of the transparent
disc disperses light when it transmits it to the floor, and when it reflects it to the ceiling, as the prism does in
Fig. 2.5. The disc slowly rotates, and a white feather is suspended above the disc to scatter the dispersed light,
with ever changing colors.

Snell’s law describes quantitatively the kinking toward and away from the normal.
sinq1 n2
Snell’s Law ¼
sin q2 n1
Where q1 is the angle of incidence, q2 is the angle of refraction, and n1 and n2 are the indices of
refraction of the two materials. Light rays could go in either direction, from a denser to a less dense
material or vice versa. The first angle is always labeled 1 and called angle of incidence, the second is
22 Chapter 2 Reflection and refraction

FIGURE 2.7
Light rays traveling from air to water, or from water to air. When it traverses the air-water interface, the light ray
is kinked toward the normal, compared to going straight through the interface. When going from water to air,
instead, the light ray is kinked away from the normal. Light kinks does not bend: it abruptly, not gradually,
changes direction at the interface.

labeled 2 and called angle of refraction. Both angles are measured from the normal. In other words,
Snell’s law says that the sines of the angles of incidence and refraction are inversely proportional to the
indices of refraction of the first and the second material. Fig. 2.8 gives you a visual representation of
Snell’s law in its general form, and for the specific cases of a ray traveling from air to water and one
traveling from water to air.
The angles qair and qwater in Fig. 2.8 do not change if the light ray goes from air to water or vice
versa, thus the direction of the light ray is reversible. This is always true. Light rays are always
reversible. You will make great use of this characteristic of all light rays, both in refraction in this
chapter and in lenses and ray tracing in Chapter 3.

2.3 Total internal reflection

Any angle in the less dense material corresponds to a particular angle in the denser material. For
example, for rays traveling from air into water, with indices of refraction n ¼ 1 and n ¼ 1.33, Snell’s
law gives the results shown in Table 2.2.
Table 2.2 goes up to 90 degrees only. This is because the angle in air qair can never be greater than
90 degrees. If it were greater, the ray would not be coming from air but from under the surface of water,
below the interface.
Table 2.2 can be also used for a ray of light traveling in the opposite direction, from water into air.
A diver with a waterproof flashlight could experiment with rays of light and verify for us that the
angles reported in the table are still accurate when going from water to air.
Remember, rays of light can always be inverted. All optics formulas and all drawings, including
Snell’s law and the table of values for qair and qwater, do apply to inverted rays. When using inverted
rays, the only difference for Snell’s law is that you start from the angle in water and calculate the angle
in air. Looking at Table 2.2, you can start from the right column and find the resulting angles in air on
the left. But there is an interesting effect: Since nwater > nair, the angles in water qwater do not go all the
 2.3 Total internal reflection 23

FIGURE 2.8
Snell’s law. Left: The general form of Snell’s law, valid for any materials. If material 2 is denser than material 1,
a light ray hitting the interface between materials 1 and 2 does not go straight, but kinks toward the normal, as
in the graph. In other words, the angle q2 is smaller than the angle q1. The sines of these two angles are the
horizontal lines labeled sinq1 and sinq2, respectively. The lengths of these lines are precisely described by
Snell’s law: the sine line is longer in the less dense material, shorter in the denser material, independent of
which direction the light travels. Right: Snell’s law in the case of a ray traveling from air to water (right graph)
and its expression for this case. If the ray travels from water to air the trajectory is the same, but the arrowhead
should be inverted in the graph. On the righthand side, you see Snell’s law in these two cases. Notice that qair
and qwater do not change when inverting the direction of the ray.

way to 90 degrees. The table does not tell you what happens when a ray starts from water with
qwater ¼ 60 or any other angle greater than 49 degrees. What happens is the following:
qwater [ 49 corresponds to qair [ 90
thus, qwater ¼ 60 corresponds to qair > 90 , which is impossible because this ray would not really be
in air. Thus, a ray that hits the water-air interface at 60 degrees starting from water is not refracted into
air but reflected back into water.
Above a certain angle, called the critical angle qc or, more precisely, the critical angle of total
internal reflection, all light is reflected from the interface. No light is refracted. This occurs only when
the ray starts from a denser material and hits the interface with a less dense materialdthat is, from
higher to lower index of refraction. For example, there is total internal reflection when a ray starts from
water and hits the water-air interface.
The critical angle for the water-air interface is qc water ¼ 49 . For glass-air it is qc glass ¼ 41 degrees
and for diamond it is qc diamond ¼ 24.4 . If the angle of incidence is greater than the critical angle, qm >
qc, no light is refracted. In Fig. 2.9, when the angle of incidence is 60 degrees (scuba diver 5), it is
greater than the critical angle qc water ¼ 49 , the light is totally reflected.
24 Chapter 2 Reflection and refraction

Table 2.2
Angle in water
Angle in air qair qwater [ sinL1(qair/nwater)

0 0
10 7.5
20 14.9
30 22.1
40 28.9
50 35.2
60 40.6
70 44.9
80 47.8
90 48.7

It is easy to calculate the critical angle. At the critical angle, the angle in air qair ¼ 90 . Since you
know that the index of refraction n for air ¼ 1 and that sin 90 ¼ 1, Snell’s Law appears as
1
nwater ¼
sin qc water
Hence,
1
sin qc water ¼
nwater
from which you can calculate.
1
qc water ¼ sin1 ¼ sin1 0:75 ¼ 49 :
nwater
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And islands that were the Hesperides
Of all my boyish dreams.
And the burden of that old song,
It murmurs and whispers still:
“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”

I remember the black wharves and the slips,

And the sea-tides tossing free;
And Spanish sailors with bearded lips,
And the beauty and mystery of the ships,
And the magic of the sea.
And the voice of that wayward song
Is singing and saying still:
“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”

I remember the bulwarks by the shore,

And the fort upon the hill;
The sunrise gun, with its hollow roar,
The drum-beat repeated o’er and o’er,
And the bugle wild and shrill.
And the music of that old song
Throbs in my memory still:
“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”

I remember the sea-fight far away,

How it thundered o’er the tide!
And the dead captains, as they lay
In their graves, o’erlooking the tranquil bay,
Where they in battle died.
And the sound of that mournful song
Goes through me with a thrill:
“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”

I can see the breezy dome of groves,

 The shadows of Deering’s Woods;
And the friendships old and the early loves
Come back with a sabbath sound, as of doves
In quiet neighborhoods.
And the verse of that sweet old song,
It flutters and murmurs still:
“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”

I remember the gleams and glooms that dart

Across the school-boy’s brain;
The song and the silence in the heart,
That in part are prophecies, and in part
Are longings wild and vain.
And the voice of that fitful song
Sings on, and is never still:
“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”

There are things of which I may not speak;

There are dreams that cannot die;
There are thoughts that make the strong heart weak,
And bring a pallor into the cheek,
And a mist before the eye.
And the words of that fatal song
Come over me like a chill:
“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”

Strange to me now are the forms I meet

When I visit the dear old town;
But the native air is pure and sweet,
And the trees that o’ershadow each well-known street,
As they balance up and down,
Are singing the beautiful song,
Are sighing and whispering still:
“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”

And Deering’s Woods are fresh and fair,

And with joy that is almost pain
My heart goes back to wander there,
And among the dreams of the days that were
I find my lost youth again.
And the strange and beautiful song,
The groves are repeating it still:
“A boy’s will is the wind’s will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.”
 SUBLIME SELECTIONS IN POETRY

SONG OF THE MYSTIC

By Abram J. Ryan

I walk down the Valley of Silence—

Down the dim, voiceless valley—alone!
And I hear not the fall of a footstep
Around me, save God’s and my own;
And the hush of my heart is as holy
As hovers where angels have flown!

Long ago was I weary of voices

Whose music my heart could not win;
Long ago was I weary of noises
That fretted my soul with their din;
Long ago was I weary of places
Where I met but the human—and sin.

I walked in the world with the worldly;

I craved what the world never gave;
And I said: “In the world each Ideal,
That shines like a star on life’s wave,
Is wrecked on the shores of the Real,
And sleeps like a dream in a grave.”

And still did I pine for the Perfect,

And still found the False with the True;
I sought ’mid the Human for Heaven,
But caught a mere glimpse of its Blue:
And I wept when the clouds of the Mortal
Veiled even that glimpse from my view.

And I toiled on, heart-tired of the Human,

And I moaned ’mid the mazes of men,
Till I knelt, long ago, at an altar
And I heard a voice call me. Since then
I walk down the Valley of Silence
That lies far beyond mortal ken.

Do you ask what I found in the Valley?

’Tis my Trysting-Place with the Divine.
And I fell at the feet of the Holy,
And above me a voice said: “Be mine.”
And there rose from the depths of my spirit
An echo—“My heart shall be thine.”

Do you ask how I live in the Valley?

I weep—and I dream—and I pray.
But my tears are as sweet as the dew-drops
That fall on the roses in May;
And my prayer, like a perfume from Censers,
Ascendeth to God night and day.

In the hush of the Valley of Silence

I dream all the songs that I sing;
And the music floats down the dim Valley,
Till each finds a word for a wing,
That to hearts, like the Dove of the Deluge,
A message of Peace they may bring.

But far on the deep there are billows

That never shall break on the beach;
And I have heard songs in the Silence
That never shall float into speech;
And I have had dreams in the Valley
Too lofty for language to reach.

And I have seen Thoughts in the Valley—

Ah me! how my spirit was stirred!
And they wear holy veils on their faces,
Their footsteps can scarcely be heard;
They pass through the Valley like Virgins,
 Too pure for the touch of a word!

Do you ask me the place of the Valley,

Ye hearts that are harrowed by Care?
It lieth afar between mountains,
And God and His angels are there:
And one is the dark mount of Sorrow,
And one the bright mountain of Prayer.

THE SEA
By Barry Cornwall

The sea! the sea! the open sea!

The blue, the fresh, the ever free!
Without a mark, without a bound,
It runneth the earth’s wide regions round;
It plays with the clouds, it mocks the skies,
Or like a cradled creature lies.

I’m on the sea, I’m on the sea,

I am where I would ever be,
With the blue above and the blue below,
And silence wheresoe’er I go.
If a storm should come and awake the deep,
What matter? I shall ride and sleep.

I love, oh! how I love to ride

On the fierce, foaming, bursting tide,
Where every mad wave drowns the moon,
And whistles aloft its tempest tune,
And tells how goeth the world below,
And why the southwest wind doth blow!

I never was on the dull, tame shore

But I loved the great sea more and more,
And backward flew to her billowy breast,
Like a bird that seeketh her mother’s nest,—
And a mother she was and is to me,
For I was born on the open sea.

The waves were white, and red the morn,

In the noisy hour when I was born;
The whale it whistled, the porpoise rolled,
And the dolphins bared their backs of gold;
And never was heard such an outcry wild,
As welcomed to life the ocean child.

I have lived since then, in calm and strife,

Full fifty summers a rover’s life,
With wealth to spend, and a power to range,
But never have sought or sighed for change,
And death, whenever he comes to me,
Shall come on the wide, unbounded sea!

THE GREAT ADVANCE

By Thomas Walsh

In my heart is the sound of drums

And the sweep of the bugles calling;
The day of the Great Adventure comes,
And the tramp of feet is falling, falling,
Ominous falling, everywhere,
By street and lane, by field and square—
To answer the Voice appealing!

One by one they have put down

The tool, the pen, and the racquet;
One by one they have donned the brown
And the blue, the knapsack and jacket;
With a smile for the friend of a happier day,
With a kiss for the love that would bid them stay—
They are off by the train and packet.

What fate, what star, what sun, what field,

 What sea shall know their daring?
Shall the battle reek or the dead calm yield
Their wreaths that are preparing?
Shall they merely stand and wait the call?
Shall they hear it, rush and slay and fall?—
What matter?—their swords are baring!

We stand in the crowds that see them go—

We who are old and weak, unready;
We see the red blood destined to flow
Flushing their cheeks, as with footstep steady
With a tramp and a tramp, they file along,
Our brave, our true, our young, our strong—
And the fever burns us fierce and heady.

With God, then forth, by sea and land,

To your Adventure beyond story,
No Argonaut, no Crusader band
Ere passed with such exceeding glory!
Though ye seek fields both strange and far,
Ye are at home where heroes are!
Such is the prayer we send your star—
We who are weak and old and hoary.

WHEN THE GRASS SHALL COVER ME

By Ina Coolbrith

When the grass shall cover me,

Head to foot where I am lying,—
When not any wind that blows,
Summer-blooms nor winter-snows,
Shall awake me to your sighing:
Close above me as you pass,
You will say, “How kind she was,”
You will say, “How true she was,”
When the grass grows over me.
 When the grass shall cover me,
Holden close to earth’s warm bosom,—
While I laugh, or weep, or sing,
Nevermore for anything,
You will find in blade and blossom,
Sweet small voices, odorous,
Tender pleaders in my cause,
That shall speak me as I was—
When the grass grows over me.

When the grass shall cover me!

Ah, beloved, in my sorrow
Very patient, I can wait,
Knowing that, or soon or late,
There will dawn a clearer morrow:
When your heart will moan: “Alas!
Now I know how true she was;
Now I know how dear she was”—
When the grass grows over me!

—Copyright by Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston, Mass., and used

by kind permission of author and publisher.

RIGHTEOUS WRATH
By Henry Van Dyke

There are many kinds of hate, as many kinds of fire;

And some are fierce and fatal with murderous desire;
And some are mean and craven, revengeful, selfish, slow,
They hurt the man that holds them more than they hurt his foe.

And yet there is a hatred that purifies the heart.

The anger of the better against the baser part,
Against the false and wicked, against the tyrant’s sword,
Against the enemies of love, and all that hate the Lord.

O cleansing indignation, O flame of righteous wrath,

Give me a soul to see thee and follow in thy path!
Save me from selfish virtue, arm me for fearless fight,
And give me strength to carry on, a soldier of the Right!

—Outlook.

APOSTROPHE TO THE OCEAN

By Lord Byron

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,

There is rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the universe, and feel
What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!

Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin,—his control
Stops with the shore: upon the watery plain,
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man’s ravage, save his own,
When for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknell’d, uncoffin’d, and unknown.

TO THE SIERRAS
By J. J. Owen

Ye snow-capped mountains, basking in the sun,

Like fleecy clouds that deck the summer skies,
On you I gaze, when day’s dull task is done,
 Till night shuts out your glories from my eyes.

For stormy turmoil, and ambition’s strife,

I find in you a solace and a balm,—
Derive a higher purpose, truer life,
From your pale splendor, passionless and calm.

Mellowed by distance, all your rugged cliffs,

And deep ravines, in graceful outlines lie;
Each giant form in silent grandeur lifts
Its hoary summit to the evening sky.

I reck not of the wealth untold, concealed

Beneath your glorious coronal of snows,
Whose budding treasure yet but scarce revealed,
Shall blossom into trade—a golden rose.

A mighty realm is waking at your feet

To life and beauty, from the lap of Time,
With cities vast, where millions yet shall meet,
And Peace shall reign in majesty sublime.

Rock-ribbed Sierras, with your crests of snow,

A type of manhood, ever strong and true,
Whose heart with golden wealth should ever glow,
Whose thoughts in purity should symbol you.

SUNSET
By Ina Coolbrith

Along yon purple rim of hills,

How bright the sunset glory lies!
Its radiance spans the western skies,
And all the slumbrous valley fills:

Broad shafts of lurid crimson, blent

With lustrous pearl in massed white;
And one great spear of amber light
That flames o’er half the firmament!

Vague, murmurous sounds the breezes bear;

A thousand subtle breaths of balm,
From some far isle of tropic calm,
Are borne upon the tranced air.

And, muffling all its giant-roar,

The restless waste of waters, rolled
To one broad sea of liquid gold,
Goes singing up the shining shore!

SOMETHING TO LOVE
By William Bansman

There are beautiful thoughts in the day-dreams of life,

When youth and ambition join hands for the strife;
There are joys for the gay, which come crowding apace,
And hang out the rainbow of hope for the race;
There are prizes to gain, which ascend as we climb,
But the struggle to win them makes effort sublime.
Each cloud that arises has fingers of gold,
Inviting the timid and nerving the bold;
Each sorrow is tempered with something of sweet,
And the crag, while it frowns, shows a niche for the feet.
There are charms in the verdure which nature has spread,
And the sky shows a glory of stars overhead,
And the zephyrs of summer have voices to woo,
As well as to bear the perfumes from the dew;
There are gushes of transport in dreams of the night,
When memory garners its thoughts of delight,
And the soul seeks its kindred, and noiselessly speaks,
In the smiles and the blushes of health-blooming cheeks.
There are rapturous melodies filling the heart,
With emotions which nothing beside could impart;
And yet, though this cumulous picture may show
The brightest of joys which ambition would know—
Though the heaven it opens is one of surprise,
All gorgeous with hope, and prismatic with dyes,
Satiety follows these transports of bliss,
And the heart asks a lodgment more real than this;
Like the dove, it will wander, and still, like the dove,
Come back, till it rests upon something to love.

OUT IN THE FIELDS WITH GOD

By Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The little cares that fretted me,

I lost them yesterday
Among the fields above the sea,
Among the winds at play,
Among the lowing of the herds,
The rustling of the trees,
Among the singing of the birds,
The humming of the bees.
The foolish fears of what may happen,
I cast them all away
Among the clover-scented grass,
Among the new-mown hay,
Among the husking of the corn
Where drowsy poppies nod,
Where ill thoughts die and good are born,
Out in the fields with God.

BROTHERHOOD
By Edwin Markham

The crest and crowning of all good,

Life’s final star, is Brotherhood;
For it will bring again to Earth
Her long-lost Poesy and Mirth;
Will send new light on every face,
A kingly power upon the race.
And till it come, we men are slaves,
And travel downward to the dust of graves.

Come, clear the way, then, clear the way:

Blind creeds and kings have had their day.
Break the dead branches from the path:
Our hope is in the aftermath—
Our hope is in heroic men,
Star-led to build the world again.
To this Event the ages ran:
Make way for Brotherhood—make way for Man.

—Copyright by Doubleday, Page & Co., New York, and used by

kind permission of author and publisher.

MORNING
By Edward Rowland Sill

I entered once, at break of day,

A chapel, lichen-stained and gray,
Where a congregation dozed and heard
An old monk read from a written Word.
No light through the window-panes could pass,
For shutters were closed on the rich stained glass,
And in a gloom like the nether night,
The monk read on by a taper’s light,
Ghostly with shadows that shrunk and grew
As the dim light flared on aisle and pew;
And the congregation that dozed around
Listened without a stir or sound—
Save one, who rose with wistful face,
And shifted a shutter from its place.
Then light flashed in like a flashing gem—
For dawn had come unknown to them—
And a slender beam, like a lance of gold,
Shot to the crimson curtain-fold,
Over the bended head of him
Who pored and pored by the taper dim;
And I wondered that, under the morning ray,
When night and shadow were scattered away,
The monk should bow his locks of white
By a taper’s feebly flickering light—
Should pore and pore, and never seem
To notice the golden morning beam.

THE PETRIFIED FERN

Anonymous

In a valley, centuries ago,

Grew a little fern leaf, green and slender,
Veining delicate and fibers tender;
Waving when the wind crept down so low.
Rushes tall, and moss, and grass grew ’round it,
Playful sunbeams darted in and found it,
Drops of dew stole in by night, and crown’d it;
But no foot of man e’er trod that way;
Earth was young and keeping holiday.

Monster fishes swam the silent main,

Stately forests waved their giant branches,
Mountains hurled their snowy avalanches,
Mammoth creatures stalked across the plain;
Nature reveled in grand mysteries:
But the little fern was not of these,
Did not number with the hills and trees;
Only grew and waved its wild sweet way,
None ever came to note it day by day.

Earth one time put on a frolic mood,

 Heaved the rocks and changed the mighty motion
Of the deep, strong currents of the ocean,
Moved the plain and shook the haughty wood,
Crushed the little fern in soft moist clay,—
Covered it, and hid it safe away.
Oh, the long, long centuries since that day!
Oh, the agony! Oh, life’s bitter cost,
Since that useless little fern was lost!

Useless? Lost? There came a thoughtful man,

Searching Nature’s secrets, far and deep;
From a fissure in a rocky steep
He withdrew a stone, o’er which there ran
Fairy pencilings, a quaint design,
Veinings, leafage, fibers clear and fine!
So, I think God hides some souls away,
Sweetly to surprise us, the last day.

SLEEP
By Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Of all the thoughts of God that are

Borne inward unto souls afar,
Among the Psalmist’s music deep,
Now tell me if that any is
For gift or grace surpassing this,—
“He giveth his beloved sleep”?

What would we give to our beloved?

The hero’s heart, to be unmoved,—
The poet’s star-tuned harp, to sweep,—
The patriot’s voice, to teach and rouse,—
The monarch’s crown, to light the brows?
“He giveth his beloved sleep.”

What do we give to our beloved?

A little faith, all undisproved,—
A little dust to over weep,—
And bitter memories, to make
The whole earth blasted for our sake,
“He giveth his beloved sleep.”

“Sleep soft, beloved!” we sometimes say,

But have no tune to charm away
Sad dreams that through the eyelids creep;
But never doleful dream again
Shall break the happy slumber when
“He giveth his beloved sleep.”

O earth so full of dreary noises!

O men with wailing in your voices!
O delved gold the wailers heap!
O strife, O curse, that o’er it fall!
God strikes a silence through you all,
And “giveth his beloved sleep.”

His dews drop mutely on the hill,

His cloud above it saileth still,
Though on its slope men sow and reap;
More softly than the dew is shed,
Or cloud is floated over head,
“He giveth his beloved sleep.”

For me, my heart, that erst did go

Most like a tired child at a show,
That sees through tears the mummers leap,
Would now its wearied vision close,
Would child-like on His love repose
Who “giveth his beloved sleep.”

LABOR
By Frank Soule
Despise not labor! God did not despise
The handicraft which wrought this gorgeous globe,
That crowned its glories with yon jeweled skies,
And clad the earth in nature’s queenly robe.
He dug the first canal—the river’s bed,
Built the first fountain in the gushing spring,
Wove the first carpet for man’s haughty tread,
The warp and woof of his first covering.
He made the pictures painters imitate,
The statuary’s first grand model made,
Taught human intellect to re-create,
And human ingenuity its trade.
Ere great Daguerre had harnessed up the sun,
Apprenticeship at his new art to serve,
A greater artist greater things had done,
The wondrous pictures of the optic nerve.
There is no deed of honest labor born
That is not Godlike; in the toiling limbs
Howe’er the lazy scoff, the brainless scorn,
God labored first; toil likens us to Him.
Ashamed of work! mechanic, with thy tools,
The tree thy ax cut from its native sod,
And turns to useful things—go tell to fools,
Was fashioned in the factory of God.
Go build your ships, go build your lofty dome,
Your granite temple, that through time endures,
Your humble cot, or that proud pile of Rome,
His arm has toiled there in advance of yours.
He made the flowers your learned florists scan,
And crystallized the atoms of each gem,
Ennobled labor in great nature’s plan,
And made it virtue’s brightest diadem.
Whatever thing is worthy to be had,
Is worthy of the toil by which ’tis won,
Just as the grain by which the field is clad
Pays back the warming labor of the sun.
’Tis not profession that ennobles men,
 ’Tis not the calling that can e’er degrade,
The trowel is as worthy as the pen,
The pen more mighty than the hero’s blade.
The merchant, with his ledger and his wares,
The lawyer with his cases and his books,
The toiling farmer, with his wheat and tares,
The poet by the shaded streams and nooks,
The man, whate’er his work, wherever done,
If intellect and honor guide his hand,
Is peer to him who greatest state has won,
And rich as any Rothschild of the land.
All mere distinctions based upon pretense,
Are merely laughing themes for manly hearts.
The miner’s cradle claims from men of sense
More honor than the youngling Bonaparte’s.
Let fops and fools the sons of toil deride,
On false pretensions brainless dunces live;
Let carpet heroes strut with parlor pride,
Supreme in all that indolence can give,
But be not like them, and pray envy not
These fancy tom-tit burlesques of mankind,
The witless snobs in idleness who rot,
Hermaphrodite ’twixt vanity and mind.
O son of toil, be proud, look up, arise,
And disregard opinion’s hollow test,
A false society’s decrees despise,
He is most worthy who has labored best.
The scepter is less royal than the hoe,
The sword, beneath whose rule whole nations writhe,
And curse the wearer, while they fear the blow,
Is far less noble than the plow and scythe.
There’s more true honor on one tan-browned hand,
Rough with the honest work of busy men,
Than all the soft-skinned punies of the land,
The nice, white-kiddery of upper ten.
Blow bright the forge—the sturdy anvil ring,
It sings the anthem of king Labor’s courts,
And sweeter sounds the clattering hammers bring,
Than half a thousand thumped piano-fortes.
Fair are the ribbons from the rabbet-plane,
As those which grace my lady’s hat or cape,
Nor does the joiner’s honor blush or wane
Beside the lawyer, with his brief and tape.
Pride thee, mechanic, on thine honest trade,
’Tis nobler than the snob’s much vaunted pelf.
Man’s soulless pride his test of worth has made,
But thine is based on that of God himself.

LINCOLN, THE MAN OF THE PEOPLE

By Edwin Markham

When the Norn-Mother saw the Whirlwind Hour,

Greatening and darkening as it hurried on,
She bent the strenuous Heavens and came down
To make a man to meet the mortal need.
She took the tried clay of the common road—
Clay warm yet with the genial heat of Earth,
Dashed through it all a strain of prophecy;
Then mixed a laughter with the serious stuff.
It was a stuff to wear for centuries,
A man that matched the mountains, and compelled
The stars to look our way and honor us.

The color of the ground was in him, the red earth;

The tang and odor of the primal things—
The rectitude and patience of the rocks;
The gladness of the wind that shakes the corn;
The courage of the bird that dares the sea;
The justice of the rain that loves all leaves;
The pity of the snow that hides all scars;
The loving-kindness of the wayside well;
The tolerance and equity of light
That gives as freely to the shrinking weed