All objects glow with heat radiance, mostly invisible but visible when they get hot enough. Each temperature is characterized by the distinctive blend of frequencies radiated at that temperature. In a thermal glow of heatshine there is one frequency (this Max Planck discovered in 1900) which is crucial to describing the mix of frequencies making up the glow—there is a keynote frequency in the thermal radiance at each temperature.
Taoist sages develop very acute eyesight and are able to see in the infrared. Laotzu could actually tell the temperature of the wall of his room by judging the keynote frequency. He had studied with Planck at Berlin and had learned from him not merely the physics of thermal radiation but also Planck's recipe for Linsensuppe and several of the card tricks of which the Great Scientist was so fond.
Laotzu's temperature scale was in grade—a grade of temperature is a giant step which the barbarians say is 141.45 kelvin. This is the scale used by Taoist sages, for whom room temperature is 2.07 grade. The frequency characterizing a temperature of one grade is one quadrillion per minute. Laotzu looked at the heatshine coming from the walls, which he could distinguish from the daylight in the room and feel on the back of his neck as well. He judged its keynote frequency was 2.07 quadrillion per minute.
Because he could see the keynote frequency was 2.07 quadrillion per minute he knew that the temperature of the walls was 2.07 grade. There is always this factor of a quadrillion built into nature, so he didn't need to touch the walls to tell. If Laotzu had wanted to calculate the brightness of the radiant heat — how many ponies of power were shining from each square pace of wall area, he could have squared 2.07 twice in succession (to raise it to the fourth power) and multiplied by pi²/60, which has about the same as dividing by six. That comes to 3 — the ponies per square pace brightness of generic unreflective surfaces at room temperature. It hardly needs pointing out that this was a big factor in the sage's comfort.
"Remember!" the Great Scientist once told his disciple Laotzu, "the energy in the Linsensuppe we are eating now was born at 100 thousand grade at the core of the sun." Only in the innermost 10 percent of the sun where the temperature is around 100 thousand grade does fusion occur and the energy released there must slowly percolate out to the sun's surface before it can take off and fly to us and our vegetable gardens.
Laotzu thought about being at the center of the sun. The same factor of a quadrillion applied for frequency there. Since the temperature was 100 thousand the frequency of the light down in the core would be 100 thousand quadrillion per million. It was X-ray frequency.
A smell of bayleaves and garlic came up from the kitchen where Confucius was heating the Linsensuppe for their lunch.
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Copyright © 2002 Leonard Cottrell. All rights reserved.
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