ch compose material substances. Dr. Royston
Pigott determined that the smallest visual angle which we can well
appreciate is that covering a hole of 11.4 inches diameter at a distance
of 1,100 yards. This corresponds to about six seconds of an arc. In a
microscope magnifying 1,000 diameters this would make visible a particle
one-three-millionth part of an inch thick. But Mr. Sorby is inclined to
think that a size between 1/80,000 and 1/100,000 of an inch is about the
limit of the visibility of minute objects, even with the best
microscopes. Now, taking the mean of the calculations made by Stoney,
Thomson, and Clerk-Maxwell, we have 21,770 as the number of atoms of any
permanent gas required to cover one-thousandth of an inch, when lying
end to end. By a series of calculations which produce numbers entirely
beyond human conception, (10,317,000,000,000 atoms in 1/100,000,000 of a
cubic inch, for instance) he reached the conclusion that there are in
the length of 1/80,000 of an inch (the smallest visible object) about
2,000 molecules of water, or 520 of albumen, and therefore, in order to
see the ultimate constitution of organic bodies, it would be necessary
to use a magnifying power from 500 to 2,000 times greater than those we
now possess. With this result settled, he was able to make one of those
radical predictions which are so rarely possible to the careful
scientist; namely, that the atom will never be seen by man. It is not
that instruments cannot be made powerful enough (though that is no doubt
true), but that the waves of light are too coarse to distinguish the
limits of such an extremely small distance. To see atoms we should need
light waves only one-two-thousandth of their actual length. At present
we are as far from that attainment as we are from reading a newspaper,
with the naked eye, at the distance of one-third of a mile.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2,
February, 1877, by Various

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GALAXY, FEBRUARY 1877 ***

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