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Heinrich Kayser

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Heinrich Kayser was a famous German physicist and spectroscopist. A physicist studies how the physical world works. A spectroscopist is a person who studies light. Light can tell us many secrets about the world. Kayser spent his life looking for these secrets. He was born in Bingen am Rhein in 1853. His work helped us understand the stars and the air.

Delegates to the Fourth Conference International Union for Cooperation in Solar Research at Mount Wilson Observatory
Delegates to the Fourth Conference International Union for Cooperation in Solar Research at Mount Wilson Observatory

Kayser found many new things by looking at light. In 1868, he watched a solar eclipse. An eclipse happens when the moon covers the sun. During this time, he saw a new spectral line. A spectral line is a specific color in the light spectrum. This discovery showed that helium exists in the Earth's atmosphere. In 1881, he also created the word "adsorption." This word describes how things stick to surfaces.

Delegates to the Fourth Conference International Union for Cooperation in Solar Research at Mount Wilson Observatory
Delegates to the Fourth Conference International Union for Cooperation in Solar Research at Mount Wilson Observatory

Kayser worked closely with a scientist named Carl Runge. They studied the light coming from different chemical elements. They wanted to see how light behaves for each one. They looked at 4,500 lines from the spectrum of iron. Iron was used as a standard for their work. They also studied 2,000 lines from the element carbon. This was done because iron was vaporized in a carbon arc.

Delegates to the Fourth Conference International Union for Cooperation in Solar Research at Mount Wilson Observatory
Delegates to the Fourth Conference International Union for Cooperation in Solar Research at Mount Wilson Observatory

These two men used math to describe what they saw. They created formulas for the inverse of the wavelength. A wavelength is the distance between parts of a light wave. Their formulas used specific constants and positive integers. Later, other scientists used different formulas like the one by Rydberg. After his work with Runge, Kayser changed his research path. In 1905, he wrote a paper about electron theory.

Delegates to the Fourth Conference International Union for Cooperation in Solar Research at Mount Wilson Observatory
Delegates to the Fourth Conference International Union for Cooperation in Solar Research at Mount Wilson Observatory

Kayser's name lives on in the world of science today. There is a special unit of measure called the Kayser unit. This unit is part of the CGS system. It is used to measure wavenumber. Scientists named it after him because he understood light waves well. He knew it was important to measure waves in a vacuum. A vacuum is a space with no air. Kayser died in Bonn in 1940.

Delegates to the Fourth Conference International Union for Cooperation in Solar Research at Mount Wilson Observatory
Delegates to the Fourth Conference International Union for Cooperation in Solar Research at Mount Wilson Observatory
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