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Chapter ID: CBB272897224

Descartes’ Experimental Journey Past the Prism and Through the Invisible World to the Rainbow (2023)

Buchwald, Jed Z. (Author)
Roos, Anna Marie Eleanor (Editor)
Manning, Gideon (Editor)

Springer International Publishing
Pages: 193-227
Publication date: 2023
Language: English

URI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09722-5_10

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Science education and teaching Teaching; pedagogy Experiments and experimentation Rainbow Historical reconstruction Optics Color Newton, Isaac Descartes, René

Some time ago during a course I was teaching at Caltech several students were puzzled by the differences between Descartes and Newton over prismatic colors. One afternoon a week or two later Moti and I were discussing a project we had in mind about Newton, when our conversation turned to the questions my students had asked. Dan Garber and John Schuster, whom we had known as friends and superb scholars for years, had greatly illuminated Descartes’ work, but something kept nagging us as we turned back to the elaborate account that he had written on prismatic colors and the rainbow. Hidden within Descartes’ seemingly fractured rhetorical construction, was something that hinted at a uniquely ‘Cartesian’ way with experiment. So having obtained a suitable prism and attached pieces of paper to it in Descartes’ fashion, I went with Moti outside to play with colors as he had. It soon became apparent that the configuration and size of this recreated ‘Cartesian’ device markedly controlled the band of colors that could be seen. This suggested ways to understand several otherwise puzzling aspects of Descartes’ observations and claims. To go further, I went home, filled a bowl with water and with the assistance of Diana Kormos Buchwald worked to reproduce what Descartes had seen in that type of configuration as well. These experiments led me to write a long paper on Descartes and the rainbow. What follows here conveys the essence of what we had found.

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Book Anna Marie Roos; Gideon Manning (2023) Collected Wisdom of the Early Modern Scholar: Essays in Honor of Mordechai Feingold. unapi

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