Robert Wood Johnson is a great specialist in organizing and staging scientific experiments. This famous American physicist was mainly engaged in work with optics. However, he conducted many exciting experiments in other areas of scientific knowledge. Contemporaries of Robert Wood called him "the father of the experiment."
early years
Wood Robert was born 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. He studied Latin in depth. Then he went to a classical school in Boston. After graduation, he successfully passed the entrance exam at Harvard.
It is noteworthy that Wood Robert began to organize peculiar tricks from early childhood. Spending time with peers in the yard seemed to the gifted child a boring task. Ordinary children's toys were replaced by ingenious equipment from the blower machine factory located near Boston, to which the boy's father was related. At the age of 10, Robert received the right not only to freely walk around the production halls, but also to study the principles of operation of industrial apparatuses. The objects of his interest were foundry molds, hydraulic presses, and various machine tools for processing parts.
As a child, Wood Robert regularly made arson during his experiments. Already in his teens, he gained a reputation as a dangerous person who enjoys working with explosives. Later, Wood’s experience as a child was of benefit to the New York police. Investigators repeatedly asked Robert for help in order to conduct an examination of explosives that were used by criminals.
Surprisingly, educators rated Robert Wood as an ordinary bully and even considered him a dumbass. And this is not surprising, because he was expelled from the Rockbury School for developing mechanisms for riding on the railing of spiral staircases installed in the building. Unpleasant incidents also accompanied his training at Harvard. Here, Wood Robert became even more interested in working with explosives. In chemistry classes, he was able to safely combine substances that scientists had previously considered incompatible. The guy repeatedly used his unique chemical recipes to organize small explosions in order to disrupt classes.
Work for the army
With the outbreak of World War I, the American army became seriously interested in Robert Wood. The experiments of the scientist were to benefit the soldiers who were at the front.
Collaborating with the army, Wood Robert proposed using bromobenzyl gas during a military campaign in France. His couples had to completely neutralize the enemy, actively advancing along the entire Western Front. According to the assurances of the scientist, all that remains after this to be done by the Allied units is to capture the Germans disoriented by the action of 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 authored the signal telescope, which allowed air balloons to be inflated with hot air at a considerable distance. 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 practice has shown, animals coped with the task rather poorly, since they were often distracted by the pursuit of schools of fish. However, the experiment revealed that seals perfectly distinguish the quietest, most distant sounds underwater. The results of the experiment created the basis for the modernization of hydrophones - devices with which they identified the noise of the screws of submarines. For such an original contribution to military affairs, Robert received the rank of major, despite his status as a purely civilian scientist.
Scientific discoveries
Robert Wood is a physicist who has become famous for the following scientific discoveries and achievements:
- investigated optical resonance;
- designed a telescope in which he used parabolic rotating mirrors made of mercury, proved the advantages of the invention;
- made an opaque filter that let in ultraviolet rays;
- for the first time in history, made clear pictures of the moon in the ultraviolet spectrum;
- improved diffraction grating;
- developed mechanisms for performing infrared photography;
- He investigated how the vibrations arising from ultrasound affect solids and liquid substances.
Writing
In 1914, Robert Wood turned to his friend, the author of exciting thrillers, writer Arthur Tran with a proposal about joint work. Soon, friends wrote the novel The Man Who Rocked the Earth ("The Man Who Shook the Earth"). The work for which Robert developed the storyline and described pseudoscientific incidents was ready in a few weeks. The book was accepted in print in 1915. Soon, the comrades wrote a sequel, where Wood inserted a series of photographs, allegedly made 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 feeling of anxiety. A famous scientist suggested that the director use rumble, extremely low sounds. To do this, a special tube was designed that connected to the organ and emitted vibrations indistinguishable to the human hearing organs.
Already the first rehearsal enthralled everyone. The instrument made no sounds. However, when the organ keys were pressed in the hall, the walls began to tremble, there was a clink of glasses and pendants on the chandeliers. It is noteworthy that inexplicable anxiety was experienced not only by the spectators who were in the hall during the performance, but also by people living in the vicinity of the theater.
Later, in the course of numerous experiments, Robert Wood proved that infrasounds produce strong winds, thunderstorms, and earthquakes. In industry, they are produced by slow-running machines, factory fans, air compressors.
